urbandispute's photostream  

That's the National Archives building across Constitution Ave. in the background.

A gardener friend mailed a couple of these to me. In 2007, this was named the hottest pepper in the world and given a rating of over 1,000,000 heat units on the Scoville scale. (Tobasco sauce rates at 2,500-5,000.) He told me to handle these using only gloves, since the oils on the outside of the pepper can burn skin, but I thought I'd risk handling by the stem for a quick picture. This will hopefully get into some salsa later today.

It was late in the day by the time I got to Zion. I had finished my Sierra trek the day before and spent the night in Beatty before heading to Utah. (There might or might not have been a stop at a Las Vegas lunch buffet along the way.) By the time I got to the top of Angel's Landing, the sun was starting to go down, and one side of the sky became ominously dark. The same early autumn storm that had chased me out of the Sierra had followed me to Utah. A light drizzle accompanied the cold breeze that began to blow. I had the summit to summit to myself as this rainbow faintly flickered across the canyon for a few minutes.

Yet another shot looking back from where I hiked on the John Muir Trail. I spent a cold night right near this spot and continued the next morning over the pass.

On New Years Day