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Published: October 15th 2006
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Silver & "BP" Bonneville Salt Flats on way to UtahOctober 15, 2006. It has been raining since early this morning here in Moab, Utah. The weather appears to be making up for five years of drought in just two weeks. There are Flash Flood Warnings posted for Arches, Canyonlands, and the surrounding mountains. The road to Delicate Arch is closed due to flooding and a number of campers & recreationists (whatever they are) have been evacuated due to flooding and mud flows. A major storm came through last Thursday & Friday dumping several inches of rain and causing flooding in several areas. I am staying close to home here at Canyonlands Campground & RV park in the center of Moab. I am here on a two-year project that most everyone knows about, but I don't want it published on the net--just yet. It's not that secret, just not ready for dissemination. If you want to know more about it, just e-mail me...
After spending the summer in the Sierras, where the trees are green instead of gray (& more than ten feet tall), I left Quincy on September 19th and drove to Fillmore, Utah where I photographed 127 petroglyph panels for the Bureau of Land Management at a site
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Abstract Petroglyph near Fillmore, Utah twelve miles from town. That took several days, and I have posted a photo or two from that shoot here. A family of Chukars were inspecting my work as I was shooting among the basalt boulders. They must have known I was not dangerous because they walked to within ten feet of me. Since I cannot place the images where they go with the text, you'll just have to read the caption information to find out where they go.
Hauling the 5th Wheel is no longer the chore it once was, but I still would rather park it and use it as a base camp to work from. That's why it is here in Moab. This park is convenient to downtown, and I can walk or ride my bike where ever I need to go. I have a mailing address here, and you can e-mail me if you would like it. Obviously, I am reluctant to post much personal information on such a public place.
I will be spending the fall and winter months getting this project underway, the funds raised and the equipment required to begin work in the spring. As the weather turns, more and
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Chukar inspecting my work (blue tape used to ID petroglyph site) more of the motorized crowd will depart, and Moab will slip into a quieter, more peaceful state. Just after I got here, I drove up into the La Sal Mountains behind town to shoot some fall colors before they were gone. Then last Saturday, after the storms on Friday, I drove to Arches to shoot waterpockets in the slickrock around Courthouse Towers. There were hundreds of them, many with great reflections of the red rocks of Arches and the blue sky. These pools only last for a couple of days after a rain, so they are relatively rare (except for this month... ) There are a couple of them posted here. I really love this Canon 17-40mm lens that allows me to lay flat on the ground and capture nearly everything in view. The two reflection shots were made with the camera sitting on my hat at the edge of the pools, which were less than six feet wide.
I am still amazed at the parade of tourists that rush "en masse" through Arches trying to see it all and not see anything in the process. I spent four hours examining slickrock pools just a few hundred yards from
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Aspens La Sal Mountains near Moab, Utah the busy main road, yet not one person among the hundreds of cars, got out and walked even a few feet from their vehicle. I had parked the truck on a pull-out that was hidden behind a sand dune, so I could shoot without it being in the scene. However, I then had to wait while the gawkers pulled off the road, jumped out to shoot the rocks and back into their cars before I could take my shot without them in it. I spent several hours on my belly on the slickrock waiting for a brief period to shoot without cars and RVs in the shot.
As I walked up out of the slickrock, a couple pulled up in a vehicle and left the engine and air-conditioner running, even though it was a beautiful day, while the wife jumped out and snapped a couple of photos. The man didn't even exit the car. I guess they did not want their artificial, Detroit-created environment contaminated by some of the cleanest air in the country. Later, on the way back, a car was stopped in the middle of the road with its emergency flashers on. Thinking they had a problem,
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Aspens La Sal Mountains near Moab, Utah I pulled off the road to offer assistance. Not necessary, it was some moron stopped to snap a couple of pictures with his point & shoot camera out the passenger window! He turned off his emergency flashers and drove a couple hundred yards farther and repeated the process. The idiot was too lazy to even pull off the road and get out of his car. I can't imagine what his photos looked like, held by one hand and pointed in the general direction of the scene with the engine running. My kindest words for him are unrepeatable on this public forum...
I am hoping to get some decent images of this area in winter with snow on the ground. Judging from the amount of rain we have already seen, there may be more snow than I bargained for. But I have Silver with 4WD & chains, along with snowshoes to venture forth. Once again, I am never bored... Will post more as interesting things, and images, accumulate.
Work was never like this...
Yesterday, October 16, was too nice a day to stay inside after two days of being cooped up by the rain, so I slipped out
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Waterpockets in slickrock, Arches National Park and drove back to Arches to find some more waterpockets in the slickrock. Found some over by the Windows section of the park, the side no one goes to...
I also added one of the images I shot toward the end of September of fall colors near Maple Grove Campground along Highway 50 between Scipio and Salina, Utah. The creek was gorgeous and the colors were great. The only bad thing that happened was some guy in a pickup truck, the only person who drove by, ran over my cell phone where I had dropped it walking back to my truck. I noticed it when I got to the truck and started recreating my day's shooting trying to locate it. I saw the pickup go by, but by the time I found the phone it was flattened into the dirt track. So now I have another one...
October 19. Went back out to Arches this morning to reshoot some of the waterpocket reflections of North & South Window after the last rains. I replaced an earlier image with one of the better ones from today. We have broken rainfall records dating back nearly 100 years this past couple
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Waterpocket Reflections The Organ & 3 Gossips, Arches National Park of weeks. There is no access to Davis, Horse & Salt Canyons in the Needles District of Canyonlands. All the dry washes are wet washes with lots of quicksand! I have some equipment testing to do for the park project, and I hope those canyons are dried out by then. At 7,000 lbs., Silver probably is not the lightest on his feet in quicksand, and I would hate to pay to towing bill to have him extracted from it. Stay tuned for more as it happens...
October 20. Back out to Arches this afternoon to see what was left of the waterpockets and their reflections. Of the hundred or more pockets seen in Image CC006, taken just six days ago, there were less than twenty remaining. However, over half of them contained some form of aquatic life, mostly fairy shrimp, that live out their entire life cycle in these small pools, only a few inches deep and a few feet in diameter. They must hatch, grow, mate, lay eggs and die before these pools dry up or freeze over. Their eggs, left in the dessicated soil, must then endure temperature extremes from freezing to near boiling before the
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Waterpocket Reflections Arches National Park rains come when they can renew their life cycle. In one pool, I found a solitary female fairy shrimp full of unfertilized eggs searching frantically for a mate that would never come, thus ending her heritage. It makes you wonder, and hopefully appreciate, the time we humans are given.
To the casual observer, my wanderings around these tiny waterpockets in the slickrock must appear comical if not insane. Here's this big bear of a guy walking around in circles, staring at the ground, often dropping to knees or stomach to circle a two-foot pool of water with a camera looking for God knows what--spare change, old cigarette butts, whatever... Nope, it's just me living out my dreams. To paraphrase Thoreau, "In Weirdness is the Preservation of the Soul."
I caught sunset in the layers of sandstone from a petrified dune, deposited here during the Mesozoic, that more resembles an image from an electron micrsocope than a sand dune. You could spend a dozen lifetimes in this region and only scratch the surface of things to see, ponder and appreciate--from the day's long life cycle of a fairy shrimp to the eon's long exposure of a sand dune worn
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Fall colors and Ivie Creek at Maple Grove down by the winds of time...
October 28. Drove out once more to Arches to shoot the cottonwoods in their fall colors along Courthouse Wash. The wash is a sinuous watercourse worn in the slickrock, and cottonwoods follow the stream, visible only from the rim rock along the wash. Walked about 1/2 mile from the road and ate lunch overlooking the wash and the snow capped La Sal Mountains to the east. Found a spa-sized waterpocket in the sandstone that was filled to the brim from recent rains. Although it was a nice day, I resisted the temptation to jump in. I couldn't see the bottom, so it was probably four feet or more deep. In July, the temptation would be irresistible--if water was still there...
November 2. Well, yesterday was the first day of November and I accomplished absolutely nothing! But then, accomplishments are for the working class, which no longer includes me! Today is the 2nd, and I accomplished twice as much as yesterday; unfortunately, mathematics caught up with me in that 2x0 is still zero. I never did like math anyway. Too concrete with few abstractions, and I thrive on the fuzzy edge of abstraction...
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Slickrock reflections North & South Windows, Arches National Park I lied a little when I said I have accomplished nothing over the last two days. My oldest daughter turns 40 on November 21st, and I have been scanning images from our past adventures to put in an "I Love Me" book celebrating the event. In honor of the event, I posted one of the earlier ones here. This was taken in the summer of 1968 while I was attending an IBM school in Dallas. I would read to her every night from this book, which she still has, and get her ready for bed. She is now a high school math teacher (doesn't take after her old dad in that respect), and we are both a little the worse for wear since this image was taken. She will probably hate me for this, but we were so cute...
Found out there has been so much flood damage to the sandy washes in Canyonlands, they may be impassable for the remainder of the year, which probably means sometime in the spring before the park service can get in and clear them. The rains in the first part of October broke records set back before the 1920s. However, I
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Sunset on Sandstone, Arches National Park have plenty of things to keep me busy: thousands of images to catalog and edit, a submarine book to finish, a navel to check for lint now and then. You know, productive stuff...
At least now I have an excuse to wander around the canyon country all winter with camera in hand (as if I needed an excuse). I will be heading back to California for Thanksgiving week and may stay an extra week, or spend it wandering around the west. Who knows? I will keep you posted...
Friday, November 24. Spending Thanksgiving in Quincy with youngest daughter, Traci, & oldest granddaughter, Hannah. The oldest daughter, Staci, turned 40 on the 21st, so we celebrated that event in Woodland where they live. They came up to Quincy for Thanksgiving, and we had 12 for dinner. Lots of food, fun and leftovers...
Drove straight through from Moab to Quincy in 12.5 hours. Took US Highway 50, the "Loneliest Road in America" which is much preferred over I-80. On average, I saw another car every seven minutes! Saw more cars in the first mile on I-80 than I saw all the way across Nevada. You gain a greater appreciation
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Cottonwoods, Courthouse Wash, Arches National Park. Courthouse Towers in background. of the Basin & Range Province as you climb over one range and drop down into a basin separating it from yet another range of mountains. From one crest you can see the lonely road winding down the mountain and straight across the empty basin. Love that journey, but would not want to pull the Big Pig over it. I have added a shot of Austin, Nevada perched precariously on a steep hillside facing yet another lonely basin and a series of ranges as far as you can see. It is a place for hermits and desert rats to love and cherish...
Plan on heading back to Moab on Monday, and will keep you posted. Fujifilm is loaning me one of their new UV/IR cameras to test for the Multi-Spectral Imaging Project, and it will be in Moab next week for testing and evaluation the first week of December.
December 16, 2006. Well, I made it back to Moab, but I had to delay it a day due to blizzard-like conditions in Nevada and Utah. It snowed five inches in Moab and seven in the Needles District of Canyonlands, and both are in the desert. There is something
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Waterpocket, Arches NP about me, the desert and snow. I've been snowed on in Death Valley, but I always blamed it on my old buddy, Bert. Wherever, and whenever, we trekked off into the desert--it snowed. We were caught in a blizzard in the Maze District of Canyonlands and it snowed nine inches in one night. We were looking for a place to pull the Bronco off out of the blowing snow, and we found shelter in some Utah junipers off the road a ways. When we woke up the next morning, we found ourselves on a runway the park service and BLM use to ferry in supplies. Luckily, no planes were operating that night. Well, old Bert ain't here and it still snowed. I guess it must be me...
Once again I drove along US 50, and had the road pretty much to myself--except for a small herd of elk I nearly ran into outside of Ely, NV. Driving through the mountain ranges, there are fifteen of them you either drive over or skirt around on 50, was pretty interesting, and the temperature was in the single digits. It was one degree below zero in Ely. I had to use four
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My oldest daughter and I reading one of her favorite books way back in 1968. We were so cute... wheel drive to make it up the mountain outside of Austin, NV. I stopped long enough to photograph the "Loneliest Road in America" sign with the sun on the valley far below. I attached that photo below.
After making it back to Moab, and attempting to unfreeze my water lines (it was 8 degrees the first night), I drove out to Arches for some snow shots while there was still enough of the white stuff to give common places a new and different look. I have included some of the better ones here. By the way, the water lines in the galley thawed out after two days, but they would freeze somewhere beneath the floor when the outside temperature dropped below twenty degrees. They would thaw out the next afternoon, so I had to make coffee with water from the bathroom sink. Gave me an excuse not to wash dishes until the afternoon...
Fujifilm loaned me one of their new S3Pro UV-IR cameras to evaluate for the project. I spent a couple of days testing the camera, lens and filter combinations on a pictograph panel near Moab. I still cannot get into the back country of Canyonlands until
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Austin, Nevada perched on a steep hillside facing the western sky and yet another series of basins and ranges. Eye Candy for Desert Rats! spring. After the flood damage, the snow and ice have made the washes pretty treacherous even to walk on. I will post some of the UV-IR images when I get a chance. I am planning on heading back to California for Christmas, and will return after the first week of January.
January 10, 2007. Happy New Year! Made it to California and back without mishap. Enjoyed the holidays with family and continued to spoil the grandkids as it is my sworn duty to do so. On the way across Nevada on Highway 50, I counted the cars between Delta, Utah and Ely, Nevada. I only encountered 25 vehicles in an hour and forty minutes, with the longest interval being twelve minutes between cars. At a combined speed of 130 mph, that put us 26 miles apart. There were more cars than that on the freeway on ramp to I-80.
I now have a hard time driving on the freeways in California. The sight of several hundred vehicles hurtling down an asphalt ribbon at 75mph with only a few feet separating them is less than inviting. I take the back roads, even if it lengthens the trip. I find
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"The Loneliest Road in America" sign Austin, Nevada. A gorgeous and empty drive across the state. it hard to believe that I commuted on those same freeways for nearly 35 years. I don't miss a minute of it either. I also haven't watched television or listened to the radio for over a year now, and I haven't missed a single thing there either. There is little danger of my becoming an anachronistic misanthrope, although this is Ed Abbey country. I still enjoy the company of people, just not thousands of them, and I now have four computers (I bought my first Mac, a Mac Pro with 8GB RAM and 1.25TB of disk storage), for a total disk storage of over 10 terabytes.
On the way back across Nevada, I took a detour to Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park, about 50 miles south of Austin. I wanted to shoot the Ichthyosaur fossils, but their shelter was closed, so I shot through the windows. I then wandered around the old ghost town of Berlin in the snow. I was the only person about, and I included a couple of images for your enjoyment. That side trip added about four hours to my return trip, and I pulled into Moab at 2:15 am Monday morning.
I am still
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Arches National Park in snow with the La Sal Mountains in the background. unable to get into the back country of Canyonlands due to the weather and flood damage. I had to do my testing of the Fujifilm UV-IR camera on a much vandalized pictograph panel near Moab. Next week I am heading to the North American Nature Photography Association summit in Palm Springs, California. Everyone here in frozen Moab wants to come with me. However, I would rather stay in the snow than mingle with the masses in a Hollywood-style desert oasis. Unfortunately, I have to pitch my project, and that's where the potential supporters are. To make up for it, I am planning on spending a few days in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, photographing the real desert. It has been many years since I was there, and I want to reshoot some of the 35mm stuff I shot 25 years ago in digital. Will keep you posted...
January 29, 2007. The New Year just got here and it's the end of January already. Well, I survived Palm Springs & L.A. but just barely. Decided to drive I-70 & I-15 because the roads were probably better maintained than the southern route. Driving down I-15 near Cedar City about 8:00 a.m.
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North Window, Arches National Park with snow covered tree in foreground and moon in the sky. on the 17th, I saw a huge cloud of white smoke boiling out near my right rear wheel. Thinking I had a dragging brake on fire, I pulled into a nearby rest stop and checked it out. Everything looked fine. Then I saw other diesel trucks on the freeway, and they were streaming white contrails high in the air and far behind them. I realized it was so cold the water vapor in the diesel exhaust was forming ice clouds as it hit the cold air. When I got back in the truck, the outside temperature read -17 degrees. It was 24 below zero in Cedar City that morning, the coldest ever recorded there.
The NANPA Summit in Palm Springs went well. Spent time with magazine & picture editors, other photographers, and vendors, all of whom I pitched my MSI project to, and all were impressed with the project. Unfortunately, pressing the flesh among the digerati brought me in contact with a flu bug, but I made it through the conference and drove into L.A. on Monday for a meeting at the Getty Conservation Institute. Only took 4.5 hours to drive 130 miles--the first 30 miles in 30 minutes,
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Shot this photo of I-70 exiting Spotted Wolf Canyon west of Green River. Even the freeways in Utah are gorgeous! (Notice the lack of vehicles...) the remaining 100 in four hours (avg speed = 25mph). I cannot see how anything gets done in L.A. with 20% of the population stuck on the freeway. When I left the Getty at 2:00 p.m., traffic was nearly as bad as in the morning. I headed Silver north & east and didn't even stop to use the bathroom until I cleared the L.A. basin.
Was feeling pretty crappy, so I spent Monday night in Kingman, AZ. However, I learned that it had snowed in Flagstaff on Sunday, so I headed for the Grand Canyon to get in some snow shots before it all melted--all this with the flu making me miserable. Spent a couple hours at the south rim before I headed east across the Navajo Reservation and home. Had to crash for an hour before I left the canyon because of the flu. Made it back to Moab Tuesday evening and spent the rest of the week in bed and watching movies. It has cleared up, and I am on the mend.
I have included a few of the images I took along the way. I won't comment on my observations of the Coachella Valley &
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Ichthyosaur fossil shelter in the snow. The graphic on the concrete wall shows these marine reptiles in actual size. Nearly 40 of them perished on this spot 230 million years ago when this was the western edge of North America. Palm Springs, or the L.A. basin. I'm just glad they are there and not here... The weather has warmed up in Moab, and I took a walk around the RV park down to Pack Creek, which runs through the south end. There was thin ice along the creek banks and into the water, so I broke out my digital camera and commenced to shoot the sun's reflection in the moving water. Using a long lens and keeping the shutter speed at 1/15 - 1/20th second, I was able to catch the sunlight dancing across the riffles in the stream, with ice in the upper part of the photograph. I call them "Liquid Light" because they are tracing the sunlight across the water. I also created a video clip of the low-res jpgs of the light dancing and set it to music with the sounds of running water in the background.
February 23. Bought a Jeep last week! While Silver is a capable 4WD vehicle, it is too long and wide for work in the back country of Canyonlands where the MSI Project work is. I found a 2006 Rubicon Unlimited with only 6,500 miles on the odometer, and it
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An old Dodge Brothers truck, long past repair, sulks outside the Machine Shop in Berlin, Nevada, looking much like a character in the movie, Cars... had never been off the road. Towed it home from below Flagstaff with Silver and have been testing it this past week. Next week it is being modified for serious off-road use with a winch, a body lift and larger tires for additional ground clearance. The Jeep Rubicon is about the only vehicle that can be used for serious off-road work straight from the factory. It comes with a 4:1 transfer case instead of the normal 2:1 in low range, and it has locking differentials front and rear to for additional traction to keep the wheels from spinning. I will be taking it into the Maze next month for a week on the MSI Project. Will keep you posted on how it does. I drove through Monument Valley on the way down to pick up the Jeep and timed it so I would be there at sunrise. What a view! I would love to wake up every morning to such a scene.
The weather has improved this month, and I even got a sunburn while photographing the site where Ed Abbey's trailer was located when he was a seasonal ranger at Arches in 1956 & 57. Abbey's description of
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Interior of the Assay Office in Berlin, displaying the tools of the chemist's trade much as they were left over a century ago... the landscape was very accurate, and we could see everything he saw and recorded in his journal, which would later become the basis for his classic book, Desert Solitaire.
I met a very nice man from Monticello who was trimming the trees here in the RV park. We got to talking about the MSI Project and he offered to take me to some of his favorite sites. We drove down to the new Kane Gulch BLM ranger station, where he is also doing the landscaping around the building. Afterwards we walked up Butler Wash to a very well preserved ruin he had been going to since he was a child. The roof is still intact over the main room, and there is still plaster on the outside of the wall. I photographed the ruin in visible light as well as IR to see if there were any signs of pictographs on the exterior wall. Couldn't see much in either wavelengths, but the remains of a large circle still exists above the plastered area. I remembered seeing this image before, and located the source. It was from an 1894 Hyde Expedition to the area and several members of the group
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Large Intaglio on desert pavement near Blythe. This human figure is 170 feet from head to toe and has been here on the desert for hundreds of years. were standing in the ruin, looking out from doors and windows. I included the visible light image to show you what it looks like today.
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Paul Hardy
non-member comment
Hi Bud!
Thanks for sharing the BEAUTIFUL images and thoughts, Bud!! Glad you're having such a wonderful time! Best, Paul