After Bryce Canyon, we made our way to Capitol Reef NP with Sadie and Oliver (A Girl to Love). What a beautiful park! It's full of gorgeous red rocks and canyons, but it has a historical aspect too. A Mormon settlement called Fruita was established in the 1880s. The settlers planted fruit orchards and built a school, which is still standing, in 1896. There are over 3,000 fruit trees still growing and producing fruit. The National Park Service maintains the orchards now. I started to pose Sadie and Oliver with an apple pie I bought at the Gifford Homestead, but I thought one of the rock formations would be a better photo.
I wonder what Betty would have made of these glorious, dramatic and semi-barren landscapes? Sadie and Oliver are a very long way from the Cotswolds here, and flowers, dairy herds and strawberry crops are just not part of the scenery. (I've been thinking about parochialism in artists as I work on BbtN: Touring the Rest of the World, which includes just the one small continent, really.)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the photos, BAinTX. They are gorgeous, and the commentary is both helpful and inspiring.