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Beatty Gunfighter
Rodney demonstrates his quick-draw technique by fanning his Colt SAA.A Homer’s Odyssey…
“Oh Lord, I’m stuck in Moab,” is not the title of a country song; it’s where I am for the month of May—by choice, not chance, or fate, or any of those things beyond my control.
To bring things up to date, I have been traveling in my condo on wheels, which I have disaffectionately named the “Big Pig,” (BP for short) for nearly a month now. Thirty-six feet long, this white elephant weighs some 14,000 pounds soaking wet and presents new opportunities every time I take it on the road. I resurrected some of my old Navy vocabulary while trying to navigate BP around tight turns, backing into dark places, or jumping over some “whoop-dee-doos” at 60mph. Believe me, trying to emulate Steve McQueen’s car chases from “Bullitt” is not something you do with a 5th wheel. Profanity helps lower the blood pressure and remove the pucker marks from the driver’s seat…
Don’t get me wrong, I love the beast, and I have been living in it for nearly six months; however, five of those months were during the winter in the Sierras at Quincy, and it didn’t move once—except during a violent snow
Beatty Gunfighter 2
Tara pins her man down while shooting his partner. storm. Now I know what a Galapagos Tortoise must feel like when they have to move—put one on roller skates and see how he does. I tow the beast with a 2006 Ford F350, short-bed, crew-cab, 4WD, diesel truck, which I have affectionately named “Silver,” and I am playing the part of the Lone Ranger (sans mask & powder blue outfit) wandering about the western U.S. However, I ain’t nobody’s “kemo sabe” and I’m not looking for any bad guys—and I sure as Hell hope they don’t find me.
My original purpose was to scout shooting locations for digital imaging workshops, which I have done, but I also brought my brother and sister along for the ride. He lives in South Carolina and she lives near Redding in California. Both are not in the best of health, and we are all getting older, so I thought this would be a good trip to renew old memories of growing up on the road. In the middle of April, we struck out on the same road we once traveled, but in much better style and comfort than during the 1950’s when the Old Man was “one step ahead of the law
and a flood of worthless checks.” The only rule we had was no staying at migrant worker’s camps, sleeping in boxcars, or picking fruit of any kind—except at the grocery store.
My first challenge came when I went to pick up my brother at the Reno airport. There ain’t no place to park a nearly 60 foot long truck and trailer anywhere in the vicinity. I circled the airport twice, feeling like a lost pioneer in a covered wagon looking for a place to pull the rig over. No luck. I ended up driving it back to the hotel, which had a large parking area, and took a cab back to the airport to pick him up. What a hoot! (More profanity…)
We headed south into Nevada on highway 95, preferring to stay off the main roads and out of heavy traffic. We succeeded in staying out of the traffic but we spent much of the time waltzing with the wind gods as they tried to blow BP into the next county. We spent the first night in Hawthorne and reminisced about the last time we were there as kids in the mid-50s. Our overloaded Chevy had caught
Joshua Tree
Joshua Tree in bloom Rhyolite, NV fire and we pulled alongside the road near a cyclone fence to try and extinguish it by throwing handfuls of sand on the blaze. Didn’t work; however, we got lots of help from the fire department located on the other side of the fence. It seems we were on fire in the middle of the Naval Ammunition Depot and they were more than anxious to help us put it out.
From Hawthorne we drove to the tiny hamlet of Beatty, Nevada, where we once lived on an old horse ranch just outside of town on the road to Las Vegas. In those days Beatty had about 200 inhabitants, a casino named the Exchange Club, a general store, two gas stations, a café and motel—and two cat houses—the Red Rooster and the Willow Tree. The old man had a job at the Shell station, which was owned by the same fellow that owned the horse ranch, the café and the motel, and I helped him out at night pumping gas, washing windshields, checking oil levels and tire pressure. Remember, this was back in the days when they were called “service stations.”
I was thirteen years old and my diploma
Sand Dunes
Sand dunes Stovepipe Wells Death Valley from the 8th grade was mailed to “General Delivery Lathrop Wells, Nevada,” which was about 30 miles away. The old man was on the lamb and didn’t want our exact location known. Anyway, these were the days when nuclear weapons tests were being conducted near Mercury, Nevada, about half way between Beatty and Las Vegas, and the soldiers stationed there would stream into Beatty every weekend looking for the local “pleasure palaces.” I remember working at the gas station at night when carloads of soldiers would wheel into town from Mercury and ask this 13-year-old kid with sand in his shoes, “Hey kid, where's the cat houses?” There were only a half dozen buildings in Beatty, and the Red Rooster had a big neon rooster lighting it up, while the Willow Tree had a big neon tree blazing away. The old man wanted to take me over there to introduce me to that part of life, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. Some of the working girls would stop by the station and tease me on their way to rooms they lived in at the motel when they weren’t on duty.
Beatty has seen at least one “Boom
Rob & Jackie Grand Canyon
My brother, Robbie, and sister, Jackie, at the South Rim Grand Canyon & Bust” period since we lived there, and now has about 600 residents. The Red Rooster burned down many years ago, and the Willow Tree was relocated out of town because it was too close to the school grounds. We stayed several days at the “Amargosa Toad” RV park, renewed some old acquaintances and made some new ones. On Sunday we were invited to watch the local gunfighters practice their shootout routines in the park. I photographed the activities and gave them the images on CD and made an 8x10” print for each of them. Lots of fun, gun smoke and noise. I enjoyed the time we lived in Beatty, and the house we lived in still stands fifty years later.
We made the “Tourist Trek” through Rhyolite, Scotty’s Castle and Death Valley before heading east to Las Vegas, which we hit at rush hour during highway construction—seems like Las Vegas is always under construction. All I could do was grip the wheel and herd the Big Pig between the white lines. We survived and made our way to Laughlin, Nevada where we spent the night at the mercy of the wind gods who were doing their best to
Condor 01
California Condor South Rim Grand Canyon make us seasick while we were stationary.
Found our way to the Grand Canyon and plunked the “BP” at an RV park in Tusayan. Of course, they only had 30 amp power and we only had a 50 amp plug, so we had to “snorkel on one main engine” (run the propane powered generator—I’m an old submariner) until I drove to Flagstaff and bought the necessary shore-power connector. The highlight of the Grand Canyon was not the canyon itself, but the California condors that have been released there. They seem to be doing well and are raising two born wild chicks. We were hoping for a sighting when four of them blew our socks off with a twenty minute aerial display in front of the crowd of tourists at the El Tovar hotel. These condors had the entire canyon to soar through, and they chose to show off for us by soaring just above our heads and swooping down to pick up another thermal for a repeat performance. I have included a couple of images to show how close they flew.
From the Grand Canyon, we headed northeast through the Navajo Indian Reservation to Monument Valley where we
Condor 02
California Condor South Rim Grand Canyon stayed at Gouldings RV park, which, by the way, is a very nice park, and it is out of the way of the wind gods who had followed us all the way from Nevada. We drove out to Monument Valley Tribal Park and paid our admission to drive through the valley. However, driving the washboard road with 65 lbs. of air in the tires and 80# in the air bags made the trek a nerve and butt rattling adventure. In addition to the bouncing, the wind gods were determined to fill every orifice with that gorgeous, fine-grain, red sand which is continually eroding Monument Valley. The next day, we headed out just as the park opened and before the wind gods awakened. We were treated to a gorgeous morning and here are the images to prove it. Don’t miss Monument Valley…The view from Ford’s Point takes your breath away and you expect to see John Wayne ride up at any moment with the cavalry right behind him.
While you won’t find The Duke out in the valley, you will find him in every gift shop and curio store. He is in full-size cardboard cutouts, photos, books, coffee mugs, clocks,
Condor 03
California Condor South Rim Grand Canyon calendars; anything you could put a likeness on, The Duke was on it. Reminds you of Graceland where Elvis adorns every surface.
From Monument Valley we headed north to Moab to spend a couple of days at Arches and Canyonlands. A couple of days were all we could stay. Every room and RV spot was full for the big car show that coming weekend, so we had to pull out by Friday. Moab has become the mechanized Mecca for motor sports. There is some kind of organized vehicle escapade nearly every weekend from Easter on. We did manage to spend a day in Arches and in the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands so my brother and sister could see them. I showed them the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where young Indie, played by River Phoenix, is part of a troop of scouts on horseback as they wind their way through Courthouse Wash in Arches while the credits roll by. This was their first time in either location, and they enjoyed it immensely, as did my other passenger—Kermit, who is my constant companion, backup photographer, and flycatcher…
Then it was south, back
Monument Valley 01
Sunrise on Sand Dunes Monument Valley to the Navajo Reservation and Canyon de Chelly. After threading the BP through the narrow and winding lanes of Cottonwood campground at the Visitor’s Center, we found a big enough spot to park the beast—sans hookups, so we had to snorkel and carry our own water and waste. A new round of expletives came while negotiating a tight turn in the campground made my sister glad she wasn’t in the truck. There were words she had never heard before bounced off the interior as I tried jockeying the BP back and forth around a tree while several other “Homers” waited somewhat impatiently for me to either give up or tear out the tree with my bare hands. After many bad words and much juggling, BP made it around the corner.
We hired a Navajo guide to take my brother and I back into Canyon del Muerto and Canyon de Chelly in Silver, while my sister took the day off to clean up and wash the red sand from Arizona and Utah from her hair. She isn’t into four-wheeling, and negotiating the miles of deep sand in Canyon del Muerto would have been tough on her. Silver, however, took them
Monument Valley 02
John Ford's Point Monument Valley like an Arabian. I have owned and driven four-wheel drive vehicles for 35 years, but this was the first time I had taken a 7,000 lb. diesel truck through deep sand, and I wanted to see how it performed. I stuck it to the floor and threw rooster tails of sand from all four wheels as we careened through the wash laughing like a bunch of teenagers on a lark. Hey, it ain’t no jeep, but it did well. We enjoyed the ruins and the rock art, and bought some nice Navajo jewelry from our guide’s nephews—it seems like they were all his nephews.
We encountered several ex-military “deuce-and-a-half’s” (2.5 ton, 10-wheel drive trucks) that had been converted for touring by adding seats to the bed to accommodate quite a few passengers. Our guide called them “shake and bake” tours as they bounced along in the hot sun. He used to drive them several times a day on the 35 mile round trip through the canyons, and he much preferred the comforts Silver offered. We also were able to stop where we wanted and stay as long as we felt like. In the end, the day cost us a
Arches 01
Jackie & Robbie Courthouse Wash Arches NP. This wash was used in opening scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. hundred bucks, but it was well worth it.
From Canyon de Chelly, we headed south and west for a quick detour to The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park before we stopped in Flagstaff where we washed clothes and repacked my brother and sister’s luggage for the return flights to their homes in South Carolina and California. I had all the experience I wanted towing the Big Pig around the west, and there was no way I would haul it to the Phoenix airport, so I left it at Black Bart’s RV Park in Flagstaff and took them to the airport in Silver. They both arrived home safely, and enjoyed their three-week trek immensely. We renewed our family bonds and retraced much of our childhood, bringing back old memories and making new ones.
After getting Silver his 7,500 mile checkup at the Ford dealer in Flagstaff, and spending a day recovering from the trip to Phoenix and back, I again headed out across the Navajo Reservation with BP in tow. This time, I was headed straight for Moab, and I parked the white elephant at the Moab RV Resort on Hwy 191 just north of the city
Arches 02
Kermit the Frog, Courthouse Wash Arches NP. This view was also used in opening scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. for the month of May while I finished some writing projects and did some photo shoots in the back country of Canyonlands. The Moab RV Resort is one of the nicest I have stayed in, with a pool and everything. I can hardly call this camping. It’s like moving your condo from one city to another.
May seems to be jeep month in Moab, and I have never seen so many clean jeeps in one location. They either clean them up after every outing, or they only drive them on Main Street. There are at least a dozen Jeep Rubicons here in the RV park, towed behind huge motor homes. None of the jeeps have a mark on them, not even a stone bruise. There are also quite a few modified early Ford Broncos and a fair number of older FJ40 Toyota Land Cruisers that have been heavily modified. Toyota is bringing back the FJ40 for 2007, but it is more like another fat-bottomed SUV than a rough-country vehicle. The Jeep Rubicon is about the only vehicle for serious off-roading that can be driven off the dealer’s lot. Most every other 4WD vehicle has more options available for sound
Arches 03
North & South Window at Sunset, Arches NP. systems and cup holders than for rough country use. But then 99% of them will never see the edge of the pavement…
I had to add $5,000 worth of aftermarket accessories to make Silver a decent rough-country truck, and I may have to add another five grand to drop the gear ratio to 4:10 and install air lockers to make it really usable. You cannot even order this gear ratio from Ford on an F350 unless you also order it with dual rear wheels, which are useless for off-road use. Even though it’s a short bed, the truck has a long wheelbase and it is heavy, which don’t add to its performance, but I’m still testing its off-road capabilities.
This week I took it for a couple of days into the back country of Canyonlands to photograph some of the Fremont and Anasazi pictographs in those remote canyons. There is a panel known as Thirteen Faces in a side canyon off Horse Canyon that requires several miles of very soft sand to get to. I had photographed this panel twenty-five years ago in 35mm, and I wanted to reshoot it in digital to see how much it had
Navajo Arch
Navajo Arch Arches NP changed. I was also twenty-five years younger when I trudged through the soft sand carrying a tripod, cameras and lens the first time I photographed the panel. That wash seemed longer, and the equipment heavier this trip. The pictograph panel hasn’t changed much, but the technology certainly has. My original photos were taken with a manual focus, manual metering 35mm SLR. Luckily, I had acquired a 17mm lens so I could shoot the entire panel in one frame. This time, however, I had a 12.8 megapixel Canon 5D and their fantastic 17-40mm EF-L zoom lens to photograph the gallery.
From Horse Canyon I drove out of the park to Davis Canyon, where I spent the night in a sandy wash on BLM land. The 4WD road into Davis Canyon is reasonably rugged with soft sand and rocky spots, but nothing treacherous. However, negotiating some of the willow and juniper thickets with a big truck like Silver required folding the mirrors against the body and enduring the screeches as branches gouged brush marks into the old boy’s hide. Silver looks like he was painted with a very coarse broom full of red paint. Luckily the silver color doesn’t show the
Mummy Cave Ruin
Mummy Cave Ruin Canyon de Chelly NP. brush marks as bad as a darker color.
You can only drive to the boundary of Canyonlands NP in Davis Canyon; from there it is on foot to another pictograph panel known as Five Faces. I had also shot this panel twenty-five years ago and was anxious to reshoot it in digital. I have included photos of both panels. I have spent the last several days editing photos, recovering from my various treks, and finishing up the writing projects I brought with me. The RV park has cell phone access, and I have Verizon’s EVDO wireless WAN, so I have internet access wherever there is cellular access. That brings Homer’s Odyssey up to date as of today. I have trips planned to Mayfield, Utah and Cortez, Colorado to visit old submarine friends, and I will provide updates as they unfold.
It is now the 16th of May, and I have been here in Moab nearly two weeks. During that time I have accomplished little, which is what I set out to do—nothing! Accomplishments are what working people do for a living. Me, I just live…
I do miss my sister’s cooking—and her doing the dishes, and my
White House Ruin
White House Ruin Canyon de Chelly NP. brother helping tear down and set up the Big Pig as we moved it from place to place. Operating in reverse, the only gear I have at the moment, I solved the second dilemma first. I haven’t moved BP, so I don’t miss my brother’s help too much—yet. Then, by eating out at the Moab Diner on Friday nights when their special is Chicken-Fried Steak for $5.99, and the Lumberjack Slam at Denny’s for $6.99, both of which come to about $10.00, including tip. I have yet to wash any dishes, but I must do so soon; I am running out of counter space.
I also haven’t cleaned BP or vacuumed the accumulated debris out of Silver. I have decided to leave it there, stratified according to the principles of uniformitism—oldest layers near the bottom, youngest at the top—my own personal geologic tour. At the lowest layer are the Sierran gravels, rocks and mud—winter’s snowmelt from Quincy. Next are the windblown sands of Nevada and Death Valley, forming their own tiny dunes in between the ridges in the floor mats. These sands are followed by the fine, red dust of the Navajo Reservation, which covers every surface. Near the
Sego Canyon Pictographs
Archaic "Barrier Canyon" style pictographs from Sego Canyon, Utah. top are the coarser sands from the washes of Canyon de Chelly, Horse & Davis canyons, with juniper twigs and assorted branches torn off by Silver’s passage through the brushy canyons.
To complete my indolence, I purchased a hard-back copy of Edward Abbey’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” an irreverent, serio-comical novel about an irrepressible gang of Luddites bent on destroying everything to do with technological progress: highways, power plants, coal mines, bridges; and ultimately, the Glen Canyon Dam, in an attempt to restore the southwest back to its natural state—whatever that was…
Since this is Abbey Country—every bookstore and gift shop has his works on display and for sale—I added it to my other Ed Abbey book, Desert Solitaire. I even bought the book at the “Back of Beyond” bookstore on Main Street in Moab—whose name comes from Seldom Seen Smith’s “Back of Beyond Expeditions” in the Monkey Wrench Gang. I read it in the mornings, like today’s, when the air is cool and the sun is shaded by BP’s bulk behind me, and in the evenings as I watch the sun go down behind the red rock cliffs in front of me.
I was successful in
13 Faces 01
13 Faces pictograph panel Canyonlands NP. Only nine faces are visible. digitally recording the pictographs of 13 Faces & 5 Faces in Canyonlands. I thought it appropriate using digital capture to record what was originally digital art—all done long ago by someone’s fingers, without brushes—truly digital art. But that is about all I have accomplished, and all I set out to do.
Yesterday, I realized the rest of the world was trying to get here to go through Arches National Park, and here I am sitting on its doorstep with no desire to do so. Therefore, in accordance with some inbred herding instinct, which I have yet to expunge, I joined the masses of asses on a trek through Devil’s Garden. Here I encountered “The Tourist,” in all ages, shapes, nationalities and inabilities. Each following their little brochure to ensure they missed nothing in their trek to see everything and yet see little. As I turned off the main track, one woman asked why I wasn’t going on to see Double-O arch. I told her it wasn’t worth the trek twenty-five years ago, and I don’t think it has improved much since then. I was more interested in the play of light and shadow, the juxtaposition of cliff rose and
13 Faces 01
Close up of three figures from 13 Faces pictograph, Canyonlands NP desert varnish on Entrada sandstone than a few holes in the rocks. Wildflowers were in bloom everywhere, and long-dead junipers stood scraggly against the sky and red rock, all just asking to be noticed but unseen by most. I’m even starting to write like Abbey…
Well, the sun is beginning to intrude on my shade, and I cannot see the screen on my laptop, so this must be a signal to stop for now. Anyway, I have to wash some clothes and dishes today…
Saturday May 27, 2006 (Update):
Back in Moab on Memorial Day Weekend (Amateur Weekend) when the western world descends upon some unsuspecting location looking for the same thing and finding that everyone else is looking for it too… A couple of young boys just rode by on mountain bikes, the rear wheels sporting several playing cards duct taped to the frames and making that flapping sound all too familiar with youngsters of any age. As they rode by, one said to the other, “Ain’t this cool!” Yes, it was cool—then and now. About the only difference was duct tape instead of the clothespins we once used to attach the cards. One wonders if
5 Faces 01
Grinding Slicks in 5 Faces alcove, Davis Canyon, Canyonlands NP. clothespins have become another victim of technology…
It’s overcast and windy this morning, a welcome relief from the recent heat. But then, this is the desert and it’s supposed to be warm. There’s an artwalk in the park today and tomorrow, so I will probably join the throngs to view the art and sample the atmosphere.
Spent the last week or so with a couple of “old” submarine shipmates in Utah & Colorado. It was nice to renew old friendships and find out how old the guys you grew up with have become. They are both retired, as am I, and have lived full, active lives. Each of us, in our own way, are enjoying the time we have been given. While in Cortez visiting Val, we took the Ute Mountain Tribal Park tour. I had taken this tour nearly twenty years ago, but I wanted to reshoot the ruins digitally. Our tour guide was a twenty-something Ute, who we nicknamed “Gilbert Leadfoot” as he roared his van load of tourists across the dusty mesa from one site to the other. We followed in Silver the best we could, doing sixty on a winding, gravel road while losing
5 Faces 02
5 Faces pictograph panel, Davis Canyon, Canyonlands NP. ground to the rapidly disappearing van.
I recommend the tour, but not the drive. It is forty miles in and back on dusty, gravel roads to the ruins in Lion Canyon, and it takes a full day to see them. You should first go see the ruins at Mesa Verde, where they have been restored and stabilized to get a feeling of how they might have looked when the people walked away 800 years before. However, Mesa Verde has been swept clean of its humanity—it could have been a Hollywood movie set. The ruins in Lion Canyon look as they have for the last several hundred years. You can still see the soot lining the walls where the “ancestral Pueblans” lived out their lives, along with broken pottery, corncobs and other remnants of their culture. The term, “Anasazi” has become another victim of political correctness and is being replaced by another mouthful of words that actually describe the people who once lived here—where they went and who they became.
Val suggested I drive to Chimney Rock Archaeological Area outside of Bayfield, CO and visit those ruins, which I did. Chimney Rock is the northern most outlier of
Cliff Rose & Entrada Sandstone
Shot of Cliff Rose in bloom against the background patina of desert varnish on Entrada sandstone. Arches NP. Chaco Canyon, and the buildings are definitely Chacoan in construction and alignment. There are astronomical alignments of the buildings that track the Lunar Standstill, an 18.6 year lunar cycle, which marks the northern and southernmost extent of the moon’s rise. There are also alignments to celebrate the equinoxes and solstices. These outliers were linked by roads and signal fires, and were probably religious sites where the astronomical events were celebrated. But then, your guess is as good as mine…
The drive from Cortez to Durango and Chimney Rock was gorgeous. The La Plata (The Silver) mountains still had snow on their heights, and the valleys were green with new, spring growth. The weather was warm with just the right number of clouds dotting the sky. In luxuriant pastures, mares with spindly-legged foals grazed while the youngsters wobbled about exploring their new found world but staying close to mom.
Well, that brings me up to date as far as words. I will post more images tonight. My laptop’s 100 GB hard drive is full, so I had to move most of the 60GB of digital images I have shot to one of my Terabyte (1,000 GB) networked storage arrays.
Collared Lizard
Collared Lizard in Ute Mountain Tribal Park Most of my image editing is done on my desktop system, which has a TB worth of internal hard drives, along with 4GB of memory, and is considerably faster than the laptop on which I am pecking out these words. However, the laptop is definitely more portable and I am operating it on the picnic table outside of the Big Pig. Besides, I can only run the desktop system in the morning and evening. It gets too hot during the day, even with the air conditioner running.
Sunday, May 28. Well I got the images posted. Tomorrow I will begin putting BP back in towing trim for the trek west. I've got some consulting work (damn! there's that four letter word again) to do and a submarine book to finish. I'll be interviewing some retired yard workers at Mare Island about building the boats we rode as youths, and then a couple of retired admirals in San Diego before they all pass into history. I will also be getting a decent haircut from the barber who has cut my hair for nearly 50 years. "Barber Joe, the last two haircuts I had were even worse than those in the
Ruin in Lion Canyon
Interior of ruin in Lion Canyon, Ute Mountain Tribal Park. Navy. Please fix them!" Luckily, there's little left to butcher and what's left will eventually grow out. Anyway, I am well past the "Age of Pretty," so I really could care less. I just put a hat on to cover the bald parts. I will post more when I feel like it...
Monday, May 29, 2006. Memorial Day—where we pause to honor those who perished that we may live in freedom—lest we never forget.
Well, I had good intentions about cleaning up the BP in preparation for my westward movement. Instead, I took the day off and went for a ride in the backcountry. Came across some gorgeous, small patches of cactus in bloom, pulled Silver off the road and commenced shooting them. I always said I would rather be lucky than good, when Lady Luck walked right by me less than fifty yards away in the form of a Pronghorn. I looked up from the flowers to see him looking back at me, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Fortunately (lucky again) I had the long 75-300mm lens on the camera to better photograph the flowers, so I pointed the round end at him and tripped the
Ruin in Lion Canyon 02
Ruin with T-Shaped door in Lion Canyon, Ute Mountain Tribal Park. shutter—dozens of times. He just ambled by, keeping me in sight while he scuffed up the sand, peed and pooped several times like he was marking his territory. He even gave me time to walk back to the truck and put the long lens on another body so I could get closer without spooking him.
He was a grizzled old male with several scars from encounters with barb wire or cougars running along his right side and flank. He didn’t seem to mind when I started Silver up and drove down a side road for a better view, just as long as I went slow and kept my distance. He stopped for several minutes at an old cattle salt-lick while I watched through the lens. Then he and I quietly parted company—two old veterans sharing a brief moment on Memorial Day. Thank You Lady Luck!
By the way, I added some additonal photos of desert flowers in Arches NP. Enjoy...
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Tina
non-member comment
The "gift" of your photos
Bud, John forwarded your blog to me. Your photograghs are awe inspiring. I feel as if they are a gift to us. Thank you. Love and God bless, Tina