My Excellent Utah Adventure – Final

End is in Sight

As I’m writing this section, I’m getting ready to drive most of the day tomorrow to my final destination of my Utah trip where I will be for the next few days and visit two more national parks. In all honestly, if my trip was to end today I would be completely happy in the sense that I’ve been fortunate to experience some incredibly beautiful scenery and believe that I have been able to meet my initial goal of taking some good photos in those places that I visited. I guess there’s also the side benefit of not having fallen off the side of a mountain.

False Advertising

Although this series of blog postings are My Excellent Utah Adventure, I’m writing this section from a small town in Arizona where I did some tours of the local slot canyons. So technically the trip isn’t just about Utah but so much of it was Utah-focused that it just made sense to keep that title. However, in all honesty I feel that my best photos have come from this one day in Arizona and I’ll be hard pressed to come up with anything better.

I only spent one day at Bryce Canyon National Park and I felt that was enough to see what I had on my list. This include yet another early morning sunrise photo shoot reminiscent of the same that I did in Zion park. The big difference in Bryce was due to the fact that it is much higher in elevation that Zion, it was 1 degree C when I got to the park. Luckily I had packed a warmer coat and a winter hat as I needed all of it and I only wish that I had some gloves as well. Again as it happened at that early moring Zion photo shoot, other dedicated photo zealots eventually came to join me in the dark.

The Best of the Best

One I’d left the Bryce Canyon area I had some driving to do to get to my next destination which was Page, Arizona which was going to be the one location on my itinerary that is outside of Utah. I had hinted in my previous post that I had anticipated that there was one location where I felt that I would bet getting the best photos and Page happens to be that place. So what is it about Page that makes it so photogenic? Actually nothing in Page itself. It’s what’s just outside of Page that brought home the goods: Antelope Canyon.

Antelope Canyon (or more accurately Upper Antelope Canyon, which is the one that I visited) was one of the most surreal places that I had ever been to. You have to imagine that you’re in a slot canyon which is a narrow, winding corridor with high walls and around every corner is a hugely beautiful section that lighting coming from the open slot in the top of the canyon. Now add in the fact that there was about 500-1000 other people in the canyon as well and most of the time you are shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. It was pretty chaotic but I was able to get a number of photos that I was really happy with such as the one at the top of this post.

This last section of this post is being written on Saturday night and I’ve just spent the day at Arches National Park which for me means that it was the last park visit of my trip as tomorrow I return home. Since Friday I have been in the small town of Moab, Utah and it’s been my base of operation while visiting both Canyonlands National Park as well as Arches. Moab is really well situated as it is next two not only two national parks but also Dead Horse Point State Park. Realistically I probably could have spend 2-3 more days in Moab given how many things there are in this area and I only got through about 75% of my list that I planned on doing while in Moab.

And Finally …

I had been dreaming of visiting Utah for years and it was just one of those ideas that you had in the back of your mind but never thought that it would ever happen. The main issues that I foresaw was that hiking through national parks was going to be a very physical type of trip and I always wanted it to be photography focused and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be Barb’s cup of tea. It ended up working out as a solo trip given that Barb didn’t have enough spare vacation days for this year to join me even if she wanted to.

In hindsight, I’m really glad that I came to Utah alone. The main reason is that I was able to decisions about getting specific photographs that would have been difficult or impractical to do with anyone else. For example, there were at least two occasions where I did 1-2 hour side trips only to take 15 minutes worth of photos. As i said in one of my earlier postings, getting the photographs always drove my agenda.

Since I’m flying home tomorrow morning, I’m reminiscing about the past 9 days and the main thing that comes to mind is that I consider myself really fortunate to be able to experience such stunningly beautiful landscape and be able to bring home those memories in my photos. I know that I’ve only really touched the surface of what’s available in American Southwest but I think that I did a lot in the time that I had available. I can’t say how much I recommend people visiting the national parks in Utah as there’s just nothing like it in any other part of the world.

What’s Next?

By this time tomorrow I’ll be home and of course starting to get back into my normal routine. The thing that I didn’t mention was that this trip to Utah was a minor trip in our vacation calendar (by number of days spent) and in about two and half months Barb and I will be heading out on our major trip for 2013 when we leave in mid December.

Thanks for all of the comments and emails that I’ve received on my Utah Adventure and I’ll be checking back in around mid December.

Baden

Theses are my favourite photos from this trip:

https://www.photos.excellentadventure.ca/Utah-2013/