2014 Photo Tour: On Our Way

This past Monday. Bob Bear and I began our long anticipated photographic tour to Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. It was a journey that would take us to four scenic locations where we had chosen to  concentrate our efforts. Over the course of our travels we took advantage of the stunning scenery to capture far more photographs than I can include in a single blog post. Today I begin with the first in a series of 5 posts, starting with shots I took on our first day, as we traveled to our initial destination, Kanab, UT.

Our route took us north through Flagstaff, AZ and soon after we entered the Painted Desert, named for the colourful layers of sedimentary rock in the buttes and mesas characteristic of this area. Like all areas that we would visit on the Colorado Plateau, the rock layers have been exposed and shaped over the millennia by wind and water into the fascinating and colourful landforms for which it is known. The dominate colour is red, in many shades, blended with white, yellow, orange, brown, grey and so on. One of the translations of the Spanish word “colorado” is ruddy, florid, red. Go figure!

Today’s first picture features a mesa, banded with several layers of colourful sandstone. Pictures like this are readily accessible along Highway 89, traveling north toward Page, AZ.  Access to our chosen photo sites would become more challenging as our journey progressed.

In the same area,  I was able to capture this next picture of a wash, a water channel that is predominately dry in the arid climate of the Arizona desert.  Washes do become torrential steams during infrequent storms that often lead to flash flooding. You can picture the course of the wash by following the line of grasses, descending the slope.

I found this next picture as we exited the hamlet of Gap on the last leg of our trip through Arizona. As is often the case, the topography changes frequently. Passing through the gap for which the community is presumable named, we left the painted desert and entered onto a high plain and another form of desert characterized by red rock outcrops and scrub vegetation.

Our first planned stop was near Page. Horseshoe Bend, as the name suggests is a horseshoe-shaped bend in the Colorado River. It is a testament to the power of nature, a 1000 ft (305 metres) deep gorge, carved into the sandstone of the Colorado Plateau. If you have difficulty with heights, it’s not a good place to visit. If you like to photograph spectacular landscapes, then it’s great.

I chose to include the next two pictures because I find them more interesting than the classic view that takes in the entire bend. You’ll have to take my word that it is indeed a horseshoe.

A fellow photographer was a little more adventurous than I, venturing out onto a promontory that I’m certain offered a wonderful scene. I normally wait until people exit the frame of my picture, but I decided that his presence complemented this scene. He represents the adventurous photographer, eager to capture that ultimate scene. Or, perhaps he just hasn’t accumulated enough wisdom to weigh the risk against the reward. It can be windy up there.

That concluded our photography for the day. We moved on to our destination, Kanab where we stayed for the night, looking forward to the following day’s events. More on those events in subsequent posts; the lottery for a permit to visit the Wave and our photography at Bryce Canyon NP.