Places
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Grand Canyon National Park
From my spreadsheet records it appears that in the two years
I've had this website Ihaven't posted anything from the Grand Canyon on this page, so it's time I gave some space to one of
the most amazing places nature given humankind to behold. This shot is from a viewpoint on the western leg of the South Rim drive, which you have to take a shuttle bus or hike to reach. I
believe it’s from Mojave Point, or possibly Hopi Point. You can
see a short ribbon of the Colorado River in the center of the photograph looking puny against the 3500 to 4000 rise to the
North Rim.
The scope of the Grand Canyon is too much to fully comprehend,
and you come away from it not quite able to recall what you’ve
just seen. It’s too far outside of your normal frame of reference, unless maybe you work there and see it every day. If you haven't seen it, I'd make a point of going at least once, but avoid the
summer and any holiday, and preferably go during the week to
miss the traffic jams.
Hall's Creek Overlook and Brimhall Double Bridge
A view of Brimhall Double Bridge from Hall's Creek Overlook off the Burr Trail
Road in the southern end of Capitol Reef National Park. The two-mile road to
the overlook is unmarked, but you can find it with the topo map from the Capitol
Reef Historical Association. You need a high clearance vehicle but I managed
it in a 2WD Ford Ranger. This photograph was taken with a 55-250 mm zoom
lens, showing the slot canyon that leads back to the bridge, but it's deceptive.
There's a twist in the slot canyon and a steep rock face to climb to get to a
spot below the bridge. I couldn't manage the climb with my camera gear and
tripod and be sure I wouldn't take a spill coming down. It's also a steep climb
down from the overlook to Hall's Creek, which was dry. I love the strange look
of the bridge from the overlook, with the appearance of creepy, somewhat menacing eyes.
Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness
The Bisti/De-Na-Zin is a small wilderness area with two separate
sections in northwest New Mexico south of Farmington. The
smaller Bisti section is more well-known due to the hoodoos, mushroom cap rocks and other unusual rock formations. I've only
done one short hike there after spending a couple hours in the De-
Na-Zin section after backpacking a short distance into there. You
can camp on BLM land near the parking lot on the west side of the
wilderness next to highway 371. It's a fascinating place and a good
place to photograph in. I got this photograph near the west side of
the area where the unusual rock formations start. The long pointed
finger of rock near the upper center of the photo may be the most
unusual rock formation I've seen. It makes me imagine a witch's
finger in a production of Macbeth or the Wizard of Oz.
Angel Peak Badlands
About 15 miles southeast of Bloomfield, NM there's a badlands
area around Kutz Canyon and Angel Peak, a sandstone rock
formation sticking up from an eroded mesa in the distance, with
a table top mesa behind it. A half mile gravel road takes you to
an observation point with this view. Kutz Canyon is a larger
canyon to the west that according to an excellent1995 guidebook
by Mike Hill titled Guide to the Hiking Areas of New Mexico has
a road leading into it from the west. You can walk down a wide
trail more like a road that looks like it probably leads into this
smaller canyon. It's a forbidding place but scenic.
Mesa Verde
A photograph of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in
North America, though "great houses" built on canyon
floors such as Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon are much
larger. Mesa Verde has 600 cliff dwellings and 5,000 ruins
over 52,000 acres. It's the largest archaeological preserve
in the US. Cliff Palace was built and occupied between
1190 and 1260 CE, but was abandoned before 1300,
likely due to drought. Mesa Verde is a World Heritage Site.
Most of the mesa lies above 7,000 ft with the highest point
reaching 8427 ft. It's almost entirely covered in forest.
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