the formation

Hoodoo in Death Valley, CA - there is something dreamlike about visiting Death Valley.  The landscape is so foreign, even alien to what most of us experience every day that you can’t help but wander down the roads staring off in every direction with so much to see from vast sand dunes, to slot canyons, to the salt flats of Badwater Basin where this hoodoo formed.

find it here:  36°23’13” N;  116°51’5” W

behind the weeping wall

It was a perfectly dry day, yet water was streaming out of the face of this rock wall in Zion National Park.  We stopped here just for a few hours while driving from California to Minneapolis.  It was way too rushed as we also stopped at Bryce Canyon National Park (at sunset) and drive to Moab, UT in the same day. I think I was hallucinating by the time we got there.

I’m looking forward to getting back to Zion next fall when I’m going to spend two weeks driving around the desert southwest camping on my Jeep!

find it here:  37°16’11” N;  112°56’19” W

Delicate Arch in the sun

Up today, is a different view of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park.  I snapped this while waiting for sunset.  Before I published it here, it was neat to see that someone grabbed it from my Flickr stream and posted it to their blog called Heck Yeah Utah!  You can check that out by clicking here.  There are some cool photos there to see.

Find it here:  38°44’37” N;  109°29’57” W

Delicate Arch

This is the first image I’m posting from the bunch I took at Arches National Park in the spring. This thing is unbelievable - Delicate Arch sits precariously at the edge of a nearly vertical drop thousands of feet to the canyon below seemingly not much between standing and tipping over and be gone forever. When you walk around it, it’s really hard to believe that it actually formed where it did. This whole park makes the time frame that we occupy our short lives here seem even shorter. There are arches (throughout the park) in various stages of formation and destruction and it really gives you the feeling that our planet is dynamic, not just on our time scale but on something so much larger and almost incomprehensible.

While I was here waiting for sunset and twilight, there were probably 100 other photographers and park visitors waiting with me. Funnily, one other photographer remarked to me “with so many others (photographers) taking photos, we won’t be able to sell these for much…” I smiled politely and chuckled, really laughing at what seemed to be his motivation for being there rather.

Find it here:  38°44’38” N;  109°29’57” W