A Shakespeareless festival

Without waiting for another opportunity to present itself after covid among the actors precluded us from watching the anticipated Shakespeare play, we moved on to enjoying ourselves in other ways.  The annual months-long festival is the center point of downtown Cedar City, with its theaters, indoor and out, on and around the Southern Utah University campus.

We wandered through the attractive sculpture garden that portrayed the playwright himself  . . .

. . . Hamlet and many other characters famed from literature.

Daily green shows precede the evening's play, a rotating series of performances.  We enjoyed a musical revue from a grassy. shaded perch. . .

. . . and other street music, craft fair and outdoor dining, all within the few surrounding blocks.  To say that some of the crafts displayed for sale were unusual would be to put it very mildly, as evidenced by the knitted horny toad and armadillo pictured.

Knitters, spinners, artists and other artisans plied their crafts and greeted visitors - a friendly and welcoming bunch of folks.

We have an unswerving interest in historic districts of places we visit.  Handily enough, our activities were right in the center of commercial and residential areas of significance, so we enjoyed perusing some.  One archway covered with purple blooming clematis drew us in to a  rock house's front garden of quiet charm.

I was practically ready to make an offer on the place until I saw the travesty of a half-block-long addition on the back that evaporated all the allure of the entrance.

Getting out of Dodge . . .

As interesting as town stuff might be, exploring the less-populated environment is the real draw of traveling for us.  The opportunity to do that with friends adds a whole new dimension to the experience.  The stay in Cedar City was at Barb & Bud's instigation.  It's been a long time since the four of us have traveled together, but we fell right into our familiar patterns.

Parowan Gap, rock art, a spring no longer, dinosaur tracks . . .

Petroglyphs created by a people long ago are an especial interest; we all were anxious to view the rock art we had read about Parowan Gap, but first, we took a short side trip to the site of a now-dry spring.  What a stark example of how quickly environments can morph!  Now nothing more than a depression in the ground partially surrounded by a dilapidated wooden fence, the site where once water flowed overlooks a vast sere barren plain that not very long ago was a lush green vegetated marshland.  Viewing those flat dusty miles made it impossible to imagine what a change had been wrought, ostensibly by farming that caused the water table to drop.

Parowan Gap is a dramatic cleft through a ridge of ancient sandstone that blocked the flow of water, causing it to back up until the pressure was great enough to break through to the plain below, where the stream fed a brackish seasonal lake known as Little Salt Lake.  Both stream and lake have evaporated completely, leaving another dry dusty plain.

 

It would be impossible to discern that significance of the gap to those who populated the area, except that the descendants of those ancient ones have retold their stories through the ages and shared some of the meanings.

It seemed to us that the Parowan Gap rock art was unique, differing from others that we have seen, making even more welcome the interpretive signs provided.  Truly, the interpretations could have only come from lore; to the modern eye, in most cases, they bore no resemblance to the markings.

The rock art was first recorded by Anglos in 1850 when an expedition of Mormon pioneers partially following the Spanish Trail encamped at the location.  They later recounted that Ute Chief Walker called Parowan Gap "God's own house".

The prehistoric peoples of Parowan Gap were preceded in time by dinosaurs that have left their own evidence that they passed that way.  Their fossilized tracks have been located and marked by Bureau of Land Management personnel, and a darn good thing they did, because I would have walked right by without recognizing them as anything more than a knob on a rock.

No matter that they were not exactly spectacular: we had a good climb up the mountainside when I became certain that there must be better tracks up there.  There were not, unfortunately, and the semi-slide down from that prominence was enough to get my adrenaline up.  I determined then to cease and desist getting myself into uncomfortable high places.  That determination was cast aside the following day, unfortunately, but this time, I really mean it.

You know who your friends are when the go along with your shenanigans. . .

 

A drive through outstanding beauty . . .

Before Barb & Bud arrived, Chris & I had a stormy twilight explore on a bit of a road with the unlikely name of Right Hand Canyon Road.  We climbed quickly from Cedar City's elevation of sparse desert denizen vegetation to thickly forested mountainside overlooking the lowlands.

With friends in tow the following day, we determined to share the experience, and were rewarded with an afternoon of incredible beauty.

Before gaining very much elevation, we stopped at an overlook/trail head, a route that was said to have been how pioneering folks transported logs off the mountain to construct the abodes for their new settlement below.

I think it would have been quite a feat to move heavily loaded oxen-pulled wagons on such a steep grade, but the need for building material evidently was great enough to make it happen.  Walking a short way down that path brought us into a wonderful shaded tunnel of green decorated delicately with flowers. 

I especially loved these tiny white star clusters that appeared to be strewn here and there and floating stemless.

Returning to the road, we came upon a mysterious forest glade where a lot of cars were parked, geese graced a sizable pond, and not a person was in sight.  There were some interesting vintage wagons.  I wondered if the occupants of those cars had been beamed up by alien space craft, but my more logical companions opined that they had roared off in ATVs perhaps brought in on the nearby trailers.

I had expected the drive to take us through densely forested areas similar to what we had seen climbing upward, but we were surprised and delighted at the scenes we encountered.  Every mile delivered us through deep verdant green mountain top meadows, colored vibrantly by multitudes of flowers gaily strewn throughout the lush grasses.

Grasslands were defined by undulating lines of trees running gracefully along slopes and bottomlands.  The richly flourishing verdure was backdropped by blue mountains and Utah's signature colorful canyon cliffs.

It was truly a delightful visual feast, peace pervading the scenes surrounding us.  That is sheep country; a more perfect place for raising them I cannot imagine.  Even the log fences added to the bucolic scenes.

As our road turned aside, we began our descent from that lofty paradise, still to encounter more sights to delight our senses.  A series of ponds followed a drainage along the mountain's flank; at the lowermost, I spotted a trio of horses having an afternoon drink - an idyllic scene near a copse of trees.

Even the steep roadside cuts were ablaze with flowers.

As we looked out from our somewhat precarious descending route, we saw how high we had climbed and how distant our destination.

We even managed a selfie to mark our adventure.

Besides the geese (graylags) on the pond, I haven't mentioned the birds we identified as we wandered gape-mouthed over the mountain, so I will name them here.  We saw mourning dove, Stellar's jay, house sparrow, American robin, western kingbird, turkey vulture, raven, sage thrasher, black-throated sparrow, peregrine falcon, spotted towhee, spotted sandpiper, lesser goldfinch, violet-green swallow, Brewer's blackbiird, red crossbill and mountain bluebird.