BACK IN SALT LAKE CITY

It wasn’t a change in itself, on the contrary, it was a kind of “back to normal” situation where the kids got back to their school, we got back to our home, which we had rented for a year and was vacated a week before we returned. Everything was just like having been kept on a freezer for a year and suddenly returned to life. Our neighbors, our friends, my office, Fanny´s daily work was just as if it was only yesterday that we left and today we returned.


YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK-
NATURE AT ITS BEST

By the beginning of June of 1983, we decided to go visit Yellowstone, the most beautiful National Park we have ever seen. This is the oldest National Park in the US and was established in 1872, Yellowstone extends its natural wonders to territories in three different states; Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

BUFFALOS PASTURING IN YELLOWSTONE
JUST LIKE IN THE MID 1800'S
The park is only hours away from Utah, and it is home to a large variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, bison, and elk.




OLD FAITHFUL THE MAIN
ATTRACTION IN YELLOWSTONE

Carefully preserved within Yellowstone National Park are Old Faithful and a collection of the world's most extraordinary geysers and hot springs and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, all of them true wonders of nature in which the US Parks Service has traditionally done a magnificent job at preserving the beauty of Mother Nature.


A BUFFALO AND HER CALF AT
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

In our way back from Yellowstone, we stopped in Idaho and as we arrived to jackson Hole, we enjoyed a boat ride in the Snake River and watched an enormous variety of wild life on both sides of it. Angie (2 1/2 years old) endured the whole trip and seemed to enjoy not only mother nature at its best, but the company of her sister and brother as well as the pampering of her parents.


GRAND TETON NATIONAL
PARK, WYOMMING

Jackson Hole is a beautiful old town reminiscent of the old Wild West and here we took pictures of Angie and Rafaelito with the traditional raccoon tale hat used by hunters in the old west days. Not very far from Grand Teton National Park, which is located in the northwestern section of the state of Wyoming, we found spectacular views with immaculate mountains and clear bustling streams, all within the Grand Teton range of mountains peering up above it.


GRAND TETON IN THE FALL,
INCREDIBLE NATURAL BEAUTY

Grand Teton National Park was established on February 26, 1929 and covers almost 500 square miles of land and lakes water. There are nearly 200 miles of trails for hikers to enjoy in Grand Teton National Park, which attracted then over 2.5 million visitors a year, making the park and the Grand Teton Range one of the most visited sites in the United States

A few weeks later, for the 4th of July holiday, we headed south toward the Arches National Park, a great wonder of nature which preserves over 2,000 natural sandstone arches which include the world-famous Delicate Arch, as well as many other unusual rock formations.

ARCHES NATIONAL
PARK, UTAH

In some areas, the forces of nature, mainly the winds, have masterly exposed millions of years of geologic history.

The extraordinary features of the park create a landscape of contrasting colors, landforms and textures that is unlike any other in the world.


CRAFTED OVER MILLIONS
OF YEARS AT ARCHES NP

NO MAN'S HANDS
COULD HAVE
EVER DONE THIS

We spent two days at this park, staying within it for one night.


DELICATE ARCH AT ARCHES
NATIONAL PARK, UTAH

As we continued driving on the Interstate 15 highway, we visited Zion National Park, designated as such in 1919. Zion is Utah's oldest national park which is known for its incredible canyons, including spectacular “The Narrows”, which attract canyoneers from around the world. Hiking possibilities are endless, however, we couldn’t do any of it as we had little Angie with us, riding either her little stroller or my own back. With nearly two million visitors per year, Zion was then, as it is today, Utah’s most heavily visited park.

THE THREE PATRIARCHS IN ZION
CAYON NATIONAL PARK, UTAH

A prominent feature of the park is Zion Canyon, 15 miles long and up to half a mile deep, cut through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River, a tributary of the Colorado River. The lowest and highest elevations are 1,200 and 8,726 ft respectively.

OTTOM A THE ENTRANCE TO
ZIONS NATIONAL PARK, UTAH

The park is Located at the junction of the Colorado Plataeu and the Mojave Desert regions. Its unique geography and variety of life zones allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals and 32 species of reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones. Its fauna include mountain lions, mule deer and Golden Eagles. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers and, of course natural arches.

In September, by the Labor Day holiday we again decided to travel far away in our very comfortable and efficient 1981 Honda Accord. This time we drove west on Interstate 80 toward the Pacific Coast. We drove about 500 miles in one day to Reno, Nevada where we stayed overnight at the Flamingo Hotel. It was in Reno that we had a bad time when we parked our car in front of a food store and found that it wasn’t there when we returned. Firtunately it hadn't been soled, it had just been tugged away for bad parking and I had to pay a $50 fine to have it returned.

Our next destination was San Francisco, however, the second night we slept in San Jose, since we wanted to visit Yosemite National Park, another wonder of Nature, which we did the following night. John Muir helped sparked the creation of Yosemite National Park, home to the gigantic sequoia trees, in 1890. The beauty of this park is almost unparalleled and inspired one of its admirers and guardians of the Yosemite Grant to say:

“I have seen persons of emotional temperament stand with tearful eyes, spellbound and dumb with awe, as they got their first view of the Valley from Inspiration Point, overwhelmed in the sudden presence of the unspeakable, stupendous grandeur.”

For tens of thousands of years, humans have changed, and have been changed by, this place called Yosemite. The Ahwahneechee Indians lived here for many generations, followed by the arrival of Europeans in the mid-1800s. The rugged terrain challenged many early travelers, with just a few—only 650 from the mid-1850s to mid-1860s—making the journey to Yosemite Valley by horseback or stagecoach. By 1907, construction of the Yosemite Valley Railroad from Merced to El Portal eased the journey, thereby, increasing visitation.



YOSEMITE AT MID OTTOM

History says that seven present-day tribes descend from the people who first called this area home. Europeans arrived in the mid-1800s, and provoked violent disruptions that displaced the native populations. Early white settlers arrived and hosted writers, artists, and photographers who spread the fame of "the Incomparable Valley" throughout the world.


MOTHER NATURE SHOWING OFF
AT YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

History books detail the Mariposa Battalion entering Yosemite Valley in 1851 to remove the Ahwahneechee. As Euro-American settlement occurred, people arrived on foot, on horseback and by rail to rustic hotels. Parts of the landscape were exploited, spurring conservationists to appeal for protections. President Abraham Lincoln signed an 1864 a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California.


MAMMOTH SEQUOIAS AT YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK IN CALIFORNIA

When we finished visiting Yosemite, we left for San Francisco, that beautiful city which Frank Sinatra sang to in “I left my Heart in San Francisco”. We enjoyed the city, visited the Golden gate, we rode the trolley and visited the market place.. One day later we headed south toward Los Angeles and San Diego, but that is going to be the material for my next posting.

The summer of 1983 was the most educational and entertaining summer our family and I had while lived in the US. Our children learned to like and respect Mother Nature and we educated ourselves by visiting these wonderful places not many people around the world have the luck to visit.

We all in our family learned then, and we know now, that Mother Nature is very delicate, she needs to be cared for, she needs not to be abused, but we feel extremely frustrated to hear even now, some 30 years later, that some people continue to claim that climate changes are a fact of life we have to live with, that there is nothing we, as a human race can do to stop those changes. We feel extremely frustrated by the fact that there are countries, first world countries that are willing to do nothing to stop the damage. Eventually they’ll learn too, however, by then it may be too late, and our children and grand children may have to live in a devastated world.

Meanwhile, at work, I got more responsibilities. Northwest Pipeline, through one of its international subsidiaries, decided to invest in the tourism industry and bought a couple of diving resorts in the Golf of Mexico, in the Cayman Islands, half way from Cuba to Honduras. I suspect this investment was a good excuse for the CEO of the company to use the company´s plane to go diving, since that was one of his favorite sports. Any way, two diving resorts in the Caribbean needed to be kept under control, and I was the Comptroller of those operations, on top of being the comptroller of the Argentine oil operation. Between the two operations, my travelling got more frequent than ever.

In my next posting: TRAVELLING GETS MORE FREQUENT THAN EVER BEFORE