Little Wild Horse Canyon, San Rafael Swell, Utah

I really struggled with picking the shots to use here, as you can tell by the sheer number I am posting. I took about 115 images in 2 hours or so of hiking. I may have included some here that should have been deleted, but just like I could not give up a child, I have trouble giving up some of my images. As an aside, I REALLY LIKE all my children, and I am not planning to ever give them up!

Anyway, here they are, I will insert comments as I feel necessary, they are posted in order of being taken.

There are many undercut areas and twisty spots. I just love how this shot frames up.

There are many areas where there are these Iron looking deposits in the middle of horizontal sand strata. They could be 2 million year old bird poop for all I know, but I loved seeing them just to provide a little variety.

There are areas where different strata run together at crazy angles. I liked how the wind and water hollowed holes lead into the V, the whole area is fascinating to look at I found myself stopping and just looking at times, forgetting to take pictures.

I guess I like things to open up to the left, either that or mother nature prefers that. You tend to do a lot of looking up at the sky in slot canyons. A little rain upstream can ruin your day.

This is quite nearly one of my favorite views in a slot canyon, Looking straight up at a narrow ribbon of blue sky. It is kind of a lonely feeling being waaayyy down there, but at the same time it makes me feel safe. Maybe I had an ancestor who was a mole? I dunno.

I have found that it is really impossible to capture the feeling of being in a slot. Maybe if I get a fisheye lens one day. It is just an awesome feeling to stand in one of these. The weird and wild shaping of the rock due to water and wind add to the alieness of the landscape.

This shot was taken where we stopped and turned around. There was a long stretch of flooded slot and we didn't want to wade it. I was curious to see if I could get any reflections in the water. Once it completely settled down it was literally smooth as glass.

The blue of the sky was at times overwhelming, It was just SO BLUE especially with the contrast of the stone.

This was my attempt at a more artsy shot. I find that if I try to compose a shot that is balanced and blah blah blah, well it ends up a blah shot to me. I don't know if it is a failure of my technique, or lack of inspiration, but I tend to do better just walking around and shooting what catches my eye. This is a more studied shot, I included it because it sets the scene of the opening back out of the canyon. I am not sure I like it a LOT, but I don't hate it either.

Goblin Valley

After leaving Little Wild Horse Canyon, we headed back East to Goblin Valley, a very short drive. The sky remained that impossible blue during our time there. Goblin is a special place for me. I had hoped to do some nightime, long exposure, really crazy stuff, but that was foiled by our not finding a campsite inside the park. Really should have remembered it was the week before Easter. sigh.....

Anyway, here is the road coming back from LWH, I found that I kept wanting to keep a lot of sky in my pictures, it was so impossibly blue with perfect puffy white clouds. I still get a really cool feeling when I think about it.

Goblin is full of impossibly twisted and sculpted rocks, some by themselves and others in groups. This hoodoo as they are called by some is a favorite of mine.

This is more of a general biew of the East end of the valley just to give you an idea of the scope of the place.

This fin sticking out reminded me of a dolphin. So I named him "Flipper"

This Butte shows the rock layer above the mudstone of the valley. I love the contrast between the red and the Grey.

I don't remember this many sticky outy rocks before, the park seems to be always changing, every time I visit I see new things.

Photographically, there are so many textures to be found in this landscape, and the colors just make me a little giddy to see.

I love the starkness of this shot, the sere, dry, stone with the rich blue behind it. It really looks like this. Honest!

Lower Cathedral Valley: Temple of the Sun & Temple of the Moon

I had never heard of these particular formations until I started researching Cathedral Valley for this trip. I would love to go back and be there at sunrise, I think the scene would be unbelievable.

Temple of the Moon in front, and Temple of the Sun in the background.

Moving on around, I like this composition better... but I don't know why.

This pretty much is the desert for me. Gravelly rock and sand with dead stuff stuck in it. It is a harsh place with death waiting even for the hardiest plants. Though beautiful in it's own starkness.

This is cropped down from a wider shot, I simply loved the framing, this was a magical little grotto a cool place out of the sun, from which I could see the object of my contemplation.

Morrell Cabin Cathedral Valley Utah

Towards late afternoon as we were heading towards the Upper Cathedral Valley Overlook, as we drove we saw a sign for the "Historic Morrell Cabin", clueless, we decided it was worth a quick look and that we had enought light left to poke around and still get some stuff at the overlook.

We ended up being VERY glad we stopped. It is a very picturesque and beautiful spot with some moments of good light. As you can tell we had broken clouds and some haze/overcast during the course of the day. This made for tough lighting situations, but I think overall we did OK.

Looking South East

This was a quick set up and see if it turns out kind of shot. I think it turned out rather well. It always interests me to notice the differences between what the eye sees and what the camera captures. Sometimes it frustrates me seeing a beautiful scene that simply doesn't translate to digital, and sometimes it amazes me because this didn't look nearly as cool to the naked eye.

This rusty wire and the texture of this wood intrigued me.

I really liked the reflection in the window thing, this is less dramatic, but I think provides an interesting framing to the scene.

This next shot reminds me of the work of an on-line acquaintance of mine, Keitha McCall, she is a fantastic Macro artist, her blog can be found as "A Scenic World" on my links list. I would love to be half as good as she is.

This functioned as a salt/pepper shaker lid, as best I can guess. Really not sure why they nailed it to the wall though.

There was an interesting small display of artifacts inside the cabin, I liked the texture of these shots of rusty nails. The diffuse sunlight coming through the dirty window provided a beautiful color to the interior, though hardly dazzling in intensity.

End of the Day: Cathedral Valley

After the Cabin, we headed uphill to our campsite, these shots are of Upper Cathedral Valley, pretty much from the usual spots everybody takes pictures from. They put the road conveniently on the best spot to shoot from. How nice of them!

I love the visual of the streambed, dry of course, headed out into the valley. This are has been created by water, which is kind of funny considering it is high desert.

Not sure if I overcooked the sky in this one with the blue/cyan, but it brought out the sky that was much less interesting as the camera saw it. This is more like what I remember seeing.

This is from the Upper Cathedral Valley Overlook, I do like how it brings the cliffs on the right into the shot with the different angle it presents.

Last light in the campground, I have a soft spot for this kind of shot, it is pretty much a cliche, but it fits the mood of the evening.

Long Shot

Decided to play with my 2x teleconverter and 200mm screwmount lens. Not the best shot, but for a converter not so bad either. Not so bad at all! This is looking East from a spot just down the way from our campsite, and right behind the cacti I will post next.

Cacti in Camp

You have to be careful where you walk at night in the campground, these guys are very VERY sharp! All taken with a screwmount (M42) Vivitar 200MM f3.5, on tripod with remote release. It was still fairly early and with cloud cover so the light was diffuse but not overly bright.

Trailer for Sale, No Nosy Neighbors, Needs Paint.

This was just off the road on the way to some hokey viewpoint. I just can't resist these types of things. I mean REALLY! Who in their right mind would want to live out here for more than a few days at a time? These rancher shelters, get used a lot.

The only thing I was missing here was a Vulture or two circling the sun. On overcast days in the desert, this is what it feels like. A lot!

Bentonite Hills: Maybe they did fake the Mars Lander!!

On our way out of Cathedral Valley, we passed through an area called the Bentonite Hills, don't know what that is, but it is very colorful. My first thought when I saw it is in the title, I could seriously see using this place as a place to fake a landing on Mars. Seriously freaky!

This first series is just down on the flat below the hills. There is a well/watering station for the cattle being ranched in the area. How I don't know, it is the most gosh awful and desolate place I have been since the Bonneville Salt Flats. Anyway, at this watering hole is an old truck, possibly used to drill the well hole. It was fun to look at, but I didn't get as many good shots as I would have liked, there was a dead cow next to it... several days dead.... I just couldn't stand to stand downwind.

Looking up the beam of the... boom? I just liked the Depth of Field and perspective.

Rear View, pretty complicated piece of machinery.

I love the weathered brush strokes in the paint, and the dulled shine in the chrome bits. I'm not sure why but this shot just drew me in.

The whole rig as is. Wish it was more alone in the middle of the desert, the stupid tank in the foreground distracts me.

Looking out towards the plain the truck was on. This is officially the Bentonite Hills.

3 feet to the right, and turned a little bit to the west.

There are boulders all over Cathedral Valley that are volcanic in origin, this area also seems to have a liberal scattering of much smaller pebbles along with the larger kind. It is such a surreal landscape it is hard to describe. Nothing grows there either. Decaying rock is all there is, and this stuff is pretty poor rock too, very crumbly.

Boulder Mountain Views

We did stop to admire the views as we drove through the Boulder Mtns. The sky was a little on the hazy side for really good pictures, but I thought I would include a couple showing Capitol Reef with the Henry Mtns. behind. It really is a gorgeous view, just very hard to capture the breadth of it on camera.

The Hike into Lower Calf Creek Falls

After driving over the Boulder Mountains we stopped on the Hogsback to take some shots of what we were getting into.

There is the Trail, wayyyyy down there......

For a wet canyon, there were more cacti than I thought there would be.

On the trail. It was really sandy, which made my hips hurt but kept my feet from getting sore, what a trade off.

We did see one small cliff dwelling, I am assuming it was either a fort or granary because there was not a lot of space for many people up there. This shot taken with my Pentax 135mm f2.5