Utah 2017-03

After several months without any photo travel, I decided to visit the southeast corner of Utah and the northwest corner of New Mexico to photograph the red rocks and night skies.

To see more photos from this trip, please visit the Utah 2017-03 location gallery here.  Click on any image below to see a larger version.

I started my visit by driving along the Colorado River on the Colorado Riverway Scenic Parkway just outside Moab, Utah.  This drive at river level gives a dramatic view of the bluffs and buttes carved by the river.

From Moab, it's a short drive to Canyonlands National Park, where you view the canyons carved by the Green River and Colorado River from the mesa above.  The canyons are immense and cover hundreds of square miles of fantastic shapes.

Canyonlands NP has very dark skies, which makes it possible to get an excellent view of the starry firmament.

From Canyonlands, I drove southeast to Shiprock & Bisti Wilderness.  Shiprock in northwest New Mexico is an ancient volcanic spire that is sacred to the Navajo.  It can be seen for over 50 miles in all directions.  Bisti Wilderness is a remote area of dry washes and strange hoodoos just south of Farmington, NM.  I plan to visit this area again after dark to capture stary skies above these strange formations.

My final step on this trip was a drive through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.  Here, the Colorado River has carved massive canyons before being bottled up by the Glen Canyon Dam to form Lake Powell.  The juxtaposition of red rock canyons and snow-covered mountains is striking.

The Colorado Plateau continues to offer great vistas and pleasant surprises.  To see more photos from this trip, please visit the Utah 2017-03 gallery here.   

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