Parks¶
336 words on Travel
Our trip took us to many national parks. Namely, the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion national parks, Death Valley as well as Sequoia and Yosemite national parks. The weather there was generally fine and the sights ranged from beautiful to stunning.
Consult your favourite travel guide for details. It will tell you that most of them look better in sunset. Probably owing to the time of year, it was amazing to be at high elevations where it would be sunny and warm at the same time that you are walking through snow. Also, make a mental note that it may be wiser to see less parks in more detail as we found ourselves in a hurry at many places and weren't able to stay for as long as we would have liked to.
What was also amazing in Sequoia and Yosemite parks was the smell. Unlike most forests I know that have cold humid air, those had relatively warm air with a scent of pine (?). Very nice and much more comfortable than their cold counterparts. Another fascinating thing was the clarity of the sky that let us see many stars and even the milky way quite clearly. The last time I saw a sky that clear and with so little ambient light must have been in South Africa.
The thing I am not too happy with is the quality of the digital images we took. Granted, I won't expect any miracles, considering the small size of the camera we used but I found many of the landscape photos we took leaving a lot to be desired. This may be both due to the limited resolution of the camera – taking a photo of Grand Canyon, say, will give you those huge rocks with a lot of fine details. Details you won't see in a few million pixels I guess. The other issue may be compression artifacts. Many of the photos look 'grainy' to me and only look nice and crisp when viewed at half size.
