Travelling Photographer

Bryce Canyon National Park, a sprawling reserve in southern Utah, is known for crimson-colored hoodoos, which are spire-shaped rock formations. The park’s main road leads past the expansive Bryce Amphitheater, a hoodoo-filled depression lying below the Rim Trail hiking path. It has overlooks at Sunrise Point, Sunset Point, Inspiration Point and Bryce Point. Prime viewing times are around sunup and sundown.

My favorite national park – I’ve been able to photograph the park in each season and especially enjoyed snowshoeing and shooting in the winter.

Capitol Reef National Park is in Utah’s south-central desert. It surrounds a long wrinkle in the earth known as the Waterpocket Fold, with layers of golden sandstone, canyons and striking rock formations. Among the park’s sights are the Chimney Rock pillar, the Hickman Bridge arch, and Capitol Reef, known for its white sandstone domes. In the north are the towering monoliths of Cathedral Valley.

Arches National Park lies north of Moab in the state of Utah. Bordered by the Colorado River in the southeast, it’s known as the site of more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, such as the massive, red-hued Delicate Arch in the east. Long, thin Landscape Arch stands in Devils Garden to the north. Other geological formations include Balanced Rock, towering over the desert landscape in the middle of the park.

Never had the time to complete documenting our summer travels with our granddaughter – so the next couple of posts will cover the rest of our Utah travels.

Monument Valley Tribal Park AZ /UT

Monument Valley, a red-sand desert region on the Arizona-Utah border, is known for the towering sandstone buttes of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. The park, frequently a filming location for Western movies, is accessed by the looping, 17-mile Valley Drive. The famous, steeply sloped Mittens buttes can be viewed from the road or from overlooks such as John Ford’s Point.

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Mexican Hat Utah

The village itself is small, home to fewer than 100 people  but the surrounding scenery is exceptional and not often visited, featuring 1,200 foot sandstone cliffs at the edge of Cedar Mesa, deep, layered canyons of the San Juan River, vast sandy desert plains, and a wide valley studded with isolated red rock buttes and mesas.

Monument Valley

Kodachrome SP and Grosvenor Arch

As you drive on the bumpy dirt road towards Grosvenor Arch, you see miles and miles of sage brush on rolling terrain. So when you finally arrive at the arch, this sandstone structure’s massiveness is jaw-dropping. Sheer and colossal cliffs—quite an impressive sight, indeed. The “arch” is actually two arches, which tower 150 feet above the ground. The largest arch is nearly 100 feet in diameter. In 1949, the arch was named in honor of National Geographic Society president Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, who became the first full-time editor of the National Geographic magazine. Grosvenor Arch is part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (formerly part of Kodachrome Basin State Park), and is one of the biggest such arches within the monument. Poised at the end of a sandstone ridge, Grosvenor Arch feels remote, but is in  close proximity to Kodachrome Basin State Park.

The left and center photos are from the Angel’s Palace Trail, a 1.5-mile hike that boasts some of the area’s finest views from over 100 feet above the canyons floor.