RHH's photos

Giant's Causeway is a major tourist attraction on the north coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. It is the site of 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns formed as a result of ancient volcanic activity. The name refers to a legend about its formation, i.e., the Irish giant, Finn McCool, tore up and threw its rocks into the sea to make a Causeway over Scotland (which has similar coastal formations) in order too fight the Scottish giant, Benandonner. The photo was taken from the path on the Cliffs above and shows some of the many visitors, though a large number had left because of rain.

Last spring when traveling to pick up our daughter in Las Vegas, we stopped for a morning at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada and did some hiking there. The photo was taken along the Seven Wonders trail which went through a shallow slot canyon.

Taken late spring in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada while hiking the White Domes trail in the northern part of the park, the photo shows that the park is well named.

We toured the Bergen and Stavanger areas of Norway last week and on the way back to Oslo stopped to see this 12th or 13th century church, the Heddal Stave Church. The church was built around 1200 A.D., seats 180 persons and is still used for services. The name "stave church" refers to the upright wooden poles that support the church which is made entirely of wood. The dark color is the result of applications of tar that are used to preserve the wood. There are only 28 of these churches remaining in Norway. We visited one other of these churches but it had been rebuilt after being destroyed by an arsonist.

We were in Norway last week and on the way back to Oslo stopped to see the Heddal Stave Church, the most impressive of these 13th century churches.

The first day we were at Grand Canyon National Park, we hiked the Rim Trail along the south rim of the canyon. The photo shows how close to the edge this trail often runs, paved for the first mile and then unpaved. We followed the trail nearly to the end at Hermit's Rest and then went back on one of the shuttle buses since the weather was threatening.

Taken from the south rim of Grand Canyon, this photo looks down into the canyon at the Bright Angel Trail, on of the trails we followed while backpacking and camping in the canyon. The trail at the very top of photo is the Plateau Point trail, which we did not follow. The Bright Angel trail can be seen at the top end of the area of green (Indian Gardens) near the middle of the photo and heads off to the right going all the way down to the Colorado River. The Indian Gardens area is the area where we camped for two nights. The Bright Angel trail begins very near where I was standing to take the photo and drops 3000 feet (1000 m) into the canyon over 4.5 miles (7+ km).

This is the Claret Chalice cactus, Echinocereus triglochidiatus, photographed along the West Rim trail in Grand Canyon National Park.

These Prickly Pear flowers were photographed along the Tonto trail in Grand Canyon National Park as we backpacked into the canyon. I believe this is Opuntia engelmannii, Engelmann's Prickly Pear.