(alternate title - Must do Utah: Capitol Reef National Park)
Things I liked about Capitol Reef:
5) Proof that you can work with complementary colors and still make something amazing. If you are God, that is.
4) Hieroglyphs. I call this one "Salute to the Sun."
3) Sheer cliffs. The hikes go through Narrows that are kid friendly. Except when it is 35* and one of said 'kids' wets their pants a good half mile in. That had to be cold.
2) Holey rocks. Not holy rocks. Holey. There's a difference.
1) Suggestions on how to die a slow and painful death. Look at this picture. What do you see?
Closed caves, right? It's a mine. Oyler Mine. Opened in 1904. They mined uranium ore. URANIUM ore. So what did they do with uranium before the atomic bomb? Well, in the 1920s they ground it up into powder and did one of two things: 1) Wore it in packets in waistbands or on arthritic joints, or 2) Mixed it in water and drank it. DRANK IT. They drank uranium. As a cure to rheumatism and other ailments. I think, in this case, the "cure" is much worse than the disease.
10 comments:
So amazing. I love the holey rocks. That's so incredible. Bummer about the wet pants child. No fun.
I second that...wet pants are the worst (even if you're not the one wearing them, you're the one worrying about them and hearing the griping about them.), esp. when you're not expecting to have to deal with that. :(
And the Uranium thing, that's just proof that you can't just take someone's word for stuff ("Yeah, my doctor told me this stuff would cure my rheumatism." I guess it would cure it if you call dead a cure.)
I think it is so much fun that you guys take your kids to so many places! ..Even the scary ones ;)
Cara - the good thing was, since we were on vacation we had extra undies, pants, socks, etc. in the car. And miraculously, the shoes were all dry. So it ended up not being too bad. Minus the cold, wet hike back!
I bet if you go in the summer those rocks are full with snakes and not just any kind of snakes, radel snakes...
The holey rocks picture is awesome. Beautiful place!
The whole uranium water thing makes me wonder what we imbibe that we'll probably find out in 50 years is toxic.
The holeyness was awesome.
Lasik. I'm just sure that fifty years from now we're going to find out that we were permanently damaging our eyes. Or maybe cell phones. All those waves are giving us brain cancer. Something like that.
Looks gorgeous! And veeeery interesting about the Uranium...wondering if it's a carcinogen now...
Brooke - Here's the answer to your question:
Uranium is radioactive, and does emit ionizing radiation, but at lower levels than, say, potassium.
Uranium aerosols (gas-solid and liquid-gas) inhaled can cause lung cancer due to irradiation with alpha radiation. Mixed associations as to any particular form of cancer from uranium, but its daughter product radon is well known.
:)
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