On this day of national shame no matter what your political persuasion as the government shuts down, I salute the National Parks which have given our family so much joy. The “google search image” celebrates our National Parks:

“Google is celebrating Yosemite’s 123rd anniversary – on everyone else’s behalf.

“Yosemite and all the US’s national parks, monuments, and zoos were closed at midnight last night, after Congress failed to pass a new budget.

“The government shutdown comes at an ironic moment for Yosemite: today is the park’s birthday, and it won’t be open for its own party.”

Today’s celebration Lifelet is of CanyonLands National Park in Utah, part of the Utah Rocks National Parks. As part of our sunshine get away from Seattle weather, we toured CanyonLands NP and Dead Horse State Park. The day before we were at Arches and climbed out of the river valley onto several plateaus filled with arches and hoodoos.

CanyonLands is at the top of the plateau and you look outward and down at wondrous mazes of canyons. All I could think of the whole time we were driving the park roads was of Robert Redford and Paul Newman hiding from the feds in their film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

[For the lower resolution video click here.]

In some of the photos you can see the narrow dirt roads leading down to the canyon floor. My heart was too weak to take a drive (dive) downward.

For a humorous look at the wonderful world of innovation and new ventures, checkout Fl!p and the gang at Fl!p Comics.