Saturday, May 11, 2013

Dining in a spectacular restaurant

Yesterday Julie, Jasper and I started with a hike at Negro Bill Canyon.  It's a four mile hike along (and across) a nice little stream. The weather has warmed up a lot in the last day or two and we realized this was probably Jasper's last midday hike and we definitely couldn't leave him in the car in the bright sunshine.  Bummer for our spoiled dog.
The highlight of the day was our dinner out with friends.  From left to right, we have Julie, Joan and Richard from Park City, and Deb and Mark from Salt Lake. Joan and Richard have a condo here in Moab. Dinner was a collection of appetizers, wine and beer, all served in Arches National Park.
Julie and I, as the sun ducked behind the cliffs.
The La Sal mountains were looking spectacular.  The rain we had over the past few days put fresh snow on the tops of the mountains.  A week ago, it looked like end of season snow, a bit sparse and dirty.  Now it has a fresh white coating.  We never heard how much it snowed up there but it must have been substantial.  These mountains peak right around 13,000 feet.  For reference, the top of the Deer Valley ski area is less than 9,500.
Our last view from our dinner stop was gorgeous.  The sun found a slot in the cliffs to spread its last glows.
After dinner, we drove further into the park for a "Star Party".  The head of the Salt Lake Planetarium was out with a number of park rangers.  They had quite a few very serious telescopes set up and were explaining a lot about what we could see.  My two highlights were:

  • A fantastic look at Saturn and its rings.
  • A view of Jupiter with four of its moons, all lined up in a row.  The third one out was Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system and the namesake for Ganymede Software, the company we started back in 1995.
I would have taken some star pictures, but there was a scattering of clouds.  You could easily see the stars between them, but they would have messed up any photo.  I may give star photography a shot on Sunday morning.  



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