Please place TEN of your (most colourful or memorable) Colorado Plateau photos here! "In other words, 10 items or less, please!"
![Colorado Plateau map]()
Physiographic province (map) of Colorado Plateau is an elevated, generally arid region that covers some 130,000 square miles between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin. Topographically and ecologically varied, the plateau encompasses high-desert mesas, forested mountains, deep canyons, and limited, but productive, riparian woodlands. It includes parts of four U.S. states (
Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah) and boasts the largest concentration of national parks and monuments in the country - including
Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Staircase/Escalante, and two dozen more. Millions of acres are blanketed by fifteen national forests, among them the
Coconino, the Kiabab, the Dixie, the Manti-La Sal, the Uncompaghre and the Cibola. The
Colorado River and its myriad tributaries drain the region, but most waterways are ephemeral in nature, dry much of the year.
PLEASE INCLUDE COLORADO PLATEAU PHOTOS ONLY! I've included a map for your convenience ...
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Colorado Plateau lizard facts:
Collared lizards can rise up and run on their hind legs, which allows them to run faster. When they run, the front legs hang down against the side of the body and the tail is used as a counter-weight so that they can maintain their balance. Coupling speed with large heads and powerful jaws makes them formidable predators on smaller lizards, which they will consume without mercy!
"Horny Toads" are unique in many ways, including their appetite for ants. Many of them choose to eat the large stinging varieties of harvester ants. When it comes to defense against predators, it's hard to beat a horned lizard's arsenal of extreme camouflage, dagger-like horns (hard to swallow) and the ability some have to squirt foul-tasting blood from its eyes.
Leopard lizards prefer to eat other lizards. They are extremely quick and effective predators and, on the lizard level, they must seem as ferocious and insatiable as Tyrannosaurus rex did long ago. Because they feed on animals that are a little higher up on the food chain, they aren't as plentiful as their prey (just like there aren't as many wolves as wolf food.)
![Contemplating ...]()
Cedar Breaks National Monument
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One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast ... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it's even more important to enjoy it.
While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and enjoy the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards." - Edward Abbey - (from "The Journey Home - Some Words in Defense of the Great American West")Sources:
Plateau magazine of the Museum of Northern Arizona: Founded in 1928, the Museum of Northern Arizona
is known worldwide for its collections, research and exhibitions. One of the few institutions in the Southwest to combine an exhibit program and a major research center, MNA features galleries interpreting both the natural and cultural history of the Colorado Plateau.
A Field Guide To The Grand Canyon:
By Steven Whitney, with the following acknowledgments:
Northern Arizona University, Emery Kolb Collection; U.S. National Park Service ; and Tom Bean
"The Journey Home - Some Words in Defense of the Great American West"
-by Edward Abbey (1977)
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