National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 51 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Tuesday 13 September – part four: colours, layers and switchbacks!
Soon we were coming into Zion National Park and, almost the second you passed the sign, you could see the change in the scenery. Suddenly the rocks had a series of brilliant colours in them and were arranged in layers that looked as if it was sand blown that way. It’s almost incomprehensible that this is actually rock and was sculpted this way over thousands of years. Suddenly it makes you feel very small and insignificant when you see something like this...
We stopped off at a number of overlooks on the way to get photos of everything we were seeing...
Soon we were approaching the main tunnel through this area. A bit of explanation here – if you’re approaching from the east entrance into the park, as we were, you have a very windy road to go down to, then you reach a fairly lengthy tunnel. Buses, RVs etc. can travel through here, but have to pay an additional fee ($15) to do so. The way it works is that when you reach the tunnel, you wait for the go ahead to proceed. As far as we could see, because of the number of larger vehicles, they were pretty much operating a one way system, with each way taking it in turn to go through.
We made our way through and were fascinated to see that occasionally you’d get glimpses of the rocks beyond, although sadly the camera couldn’t focus on them quickly enough, because as soon as you saw them, they were gone again.
Then we were winding our way down to the floor of the canyon on a series of switchbacks. You need to be a fairly confident driver to go through this and I would also say that if you’re a nervous passenger, you may not want to look down at where the road is going. I did that at one point and wished I hadn’t, when I saw how far down the cars were!
Soon enough, we were down there as well and the views were just as magnificent from the canyon floor. Again, we stopped at any overlook we came across.
Those photos are amazing. I am thinking I like this place best.
I had the urge to play a bit. I just love these pictures and wanted to Pop one with some editing...hope you don't mind.....I felt like doing something other than my own pictures for a bit. I came up with this one. (I really would love to do more, but I guess I should work more on my own stuff. LOL) the clolors are just amazing in your photos of those rocks.
We've really got to make a trip out there. It's just beautiful!
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Tanya
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Those photos are amazing. I am thinking I like this place best.
I had the urge to play a bit. I just love these pictures and wanted to Pop one with some editing...hope you don't mind.....I felt like doing something other than my own pictures for a bit. I came up with this one. (I really would love to do more, but I guess I should work more on my own stuff. LOL) the clolors are just amazing in your photos of those rocks.
Wow - I love it! Anytime you want to, please feel free to play with our photos, especially if you're going to achieve results like that!
Fantastic photos! I remember being struck, when I did Bryce and Zion, by how different the rock formations and erosion patterns were, even though the two parks are really quite close together.
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