The 2019 Grand Fall Adventure
It’s been a long time coming, and it’s going to be a bitter sweet trip, but our 2019 Grand Fall Adventure starts in a few days and it’s about time we share where we’re going. It’s a mix of the old favorites and the new; some make-up from missed opportunities and we’re sure some surprises along the way. Faced with one final big trip before our focus turns entirely to next-year’s big move, Ann and I had choices to make. So join us on a run-through on what we’re hoping will be a glorious one-month adventure!
The big question was, of course, what do we keep in and what do we drop out? Out went California. No final Yosemite trip, Alabama Hills, Death Valley dunes, Joshua Tree NP. No new places like Lassen NP, or even a run at Point Lobos and up along the coast. Out went farther north - our hopes to explore Glacier NP or the beautiful Canadian parks like Jasper and Banff. We even had to lop off parts of Utah we wouldn’t mind revisiting. And even though we whittled things down quite a bit, you’ll see that there’s quite a bit of driving we’ll be doing to hit the locations we want to spend time at.
With so much of our focus on Portugal planning this year, I almost totally screwed things up. I can’t recall if it was Ann or a light bulb that went off in my head earlier in the Spring, but we missed the reservation opening dates on a couple of places we were hoping to stay at. That messed up plans for at least one stay, and made us juggle things for two other stays, but in the end it all worked out - there were alternatives and once campsite reservations was on my mind, I placed on our calendar the earliest dates I could reserve campsites at places we wanted to be in and photograph. Face it, nothing beats spending the night inside the park where you want to be photographing at 5 am.
So below is the big picture map of our trip. We start out on the far left and work our way around clockwise. The purple stars are locations we’re planning on staying for one or more nights. Everything is either a campground in a National Park/Forest or a State Park, or out in the wild (up to 13 nights depending on if it snows or not). No RV parks, no hotels (if we avoid disaster). Leaving the afternoon of September 11th and returning on October 12 (13th if we decide to squeeze in a final side trip (I did hear a story on NPR about the new dark skies sanctuary in the National Antelope Refuge in Nevada that we’ll be driving by on the way home . . . .).
The beginning of our trip starts with a bang - thanks to Ann. She kept trying to figure out ways we could leave early on the last day of working to get an early start. Problem was, the distances between home and the location we wanted to be at to get our travels really started (the north gate of Yellowstone NP) are spaced for two good days of driving, with not a really good location to spend the night after a first half-day drive. That was until Ann had a photograph of the Painted Hills on her monitor and suggested we leave a day early and go there first! I revised that idea into, why don’t we take that first afternoon (Ann works from 5 am-3:30 pm) and head out to photograph at the Painted Hills in the evening/morning and start things off right.
The thing about these big trips is that you’re so busy preparing for them in the month before the trip, your photography gets a bit rusty and then you feel frustrated at the first new place you arrive at. You rarely see images and things just don’t seem right. Why not start off with a place we know, refamiliarize ourselves with our gear, get the juices flowing and then start a couple of days of long-haul driving. I think it’s the perfect start for us.
We’ve decided to take a new route to Yellowstone and to come in from the north. That means cutting through Idaho. Idaho’s Highway 12 (hope it’s half as beautiful as Utah’s Highway 12 - it will make for a great drive) has a string of campgrounds through the mountains that should make for a reasonable drive and stopping point after that first driving day.
We’ll then come out at Missoula and take interstate until the turn south towards Yellowstone NP. We know better than to arrive at the park late in the day and expect a campground site, so we’ll turn off at Gardiner and head up into the mountains where I’ve scouted out a few campsites where we can spend the night.
Next comes one of the parts of the trip that is open-ended. I’ve scouted places to wild camp along the Beartooth Highway outside of Yellowstone to the east. If you recall from our previous trip, it’s a stunning area, but at extreme altitude. As you can see below, the first snow storm of the year hit the week we arrived the last time we were there. Hopefully the snows haven’t come yet by the time we get there. (The 10-day forecast has possible rain/snow showers on the 11th and 12th . . . so we’ll see.).
If the Beartooth Highway sees an early snow, we go to plan B. But if not, we’ll spend a couple of nights wild camping on the west side of the Beartooth Highway photographing some of the interesting features we saw during our initial trip.
Plan B is to get an early start on our next stop, which is the Lamar Valley for about a week.
There’s not much more to say about the Lamar Valley other than it’s Ann’s favorite place to be. And to photograph. Hopefully, we’ll have more time to do some hiking and to have more wonderful experiences there. Both undeveloped campgrounds in the valley will be open the whole time, so getting in line early should mean we nab a spot, and then hold it for a week! We’ve got our fresh cans of bear spray (the old ones have passed their expiration date) and hope to see lots of wildlife, but never need to use our spray.
As you can imagine, we’re hoping to get a bit of snow, but after we arrive! But if we lose out on the Beartooth Highway because of snow in the Lamar Valley, we’ll take it!
After a week up north, we’ll stay in Yellowstone, but head over to Madison Campground near the geysers. There, we’ll have access to showers! Oh yeah, and geysers. There are a few places we want to check out again and some other ones we’ve found out about, so there’s plenty of exploring and photographing to do with the three nights we’ll be there.
We’re then taking a deep dive south. We’ve decided to exit Yellowstone from the East Gate, which folks have said is beautiful. We’ll then be heading down south on uncharted roads. If we make it as far as I think we can that day (though it is a laundry day so we’ll lose some time), we hope to spend the night near the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area at any of several off-road locations I’ve scouted out.
From there, we head down to Goblin Valley State Park in Utah - quite a different environment from the one we spent the first 10 days or so of our trip. We were only able to get a single night at the campground there, but we know where we can park off-road in a near-by San Rafael Swell, so we’re planning on spending two nights there (two evening shoots, two morning shoots). That is, if the winds don’t kick up like they did the last time we were there.
From Goblin Valley, we’ll head the short way down to the Cainveille Wash area that we discovered doing Capital Reef’s Cathedral Valley loop. Below is an iPhone shot and you can see there’s a lot of potential there (especially since there are at least a half-dozen different types of rock formations in about a 4-mile stretch of road. We didn’t have a chance to get back there our last trip given the hurricane rains, so it was a must visit for the both of us. Best of all, we’re planning 2 nights there and, since it’s BLM land, we can park wherever we want to (responsibly that is) and be ready to shoot first thing in the morning.
This stage of our trip can probably be called the “left-undone” portion of the trip. Like the Caineville Wash area, much of this latter portion of the trip got nixed by the heavy rains during our last trip (Hurricane Rosa), which make the back roads in these areas un-driveable. Lightening can’t possibly strike twice, can it?!?
From the Cainville Wash, we’ll be taking the Note-Bullfrog Road/Burr Trail to Boulder - another back-country route that got nixed. We know of several camping sites (free) and a small campground (paid) near Boulder, which means we’ll get to eat both dinner and breakfast at Hell’s Backbone Grill and get some photography of the Grand Staircase Escalante done at the same stop!
From there, we’ll head down to spend a night/morning at the Devil’s Garden, one of my favorite photography locations. We’ll spend the night where we’ve boondocked on two different trips now - within a quarter mile of the site, overlooking a beautiful ridge line.
From the Devil’s Garden we’ll head down for a couple of nights at Kodachrome State Park.
That will let us get a couple of showers in, fill up with water, and to photograph both the stat park and, if we want, nearby Bryce Canyon. However, given the number of side trips that we couldn’t do last time (remember Rosa), I suspect we’ll do the side trips and see what we discover.
Then for the very new part of the trip - routes and locations that got eliminated from our previous trip and places we’ve never been to before. Since I don’t have any photographs of these areas (see the “we’ve never been to before” in the previous sentence), I’m stuck with describing the route by map. Below, to the upper right, you see our campsite by Devil’s Garden and, going counter clockwise, you see our campsite at Kodachrome State Park. From there, we’ll head east a bit, and then south on Cottonwood Canyon Road, hang a left on Hwy 89 and then turn off in Big Water (after checking in at the BLM station there) to head into the boonies. Which in this case would be out to Alstrom Point overlooking Lake Powell. Some guys (who did a 6-month overloading tour of the west) rated this as one of the 5 best campsites in the West.
After a night there, we’ll be heading back west and after another stop at the Big Water BLM station (to check on conditions approaching White Pocket,) we’ll head back on Highway 89 and then south on House Rock Valley Road, then east into the Paria to White Pocket. This is all off-road and we’ve been warned that the stretch to White Pocket is sandy, so we’ll be airing down our tires and, if necessary, pulling out the Max Trax. With careful, skillful driving, we’ll make it to White Pocket where we’ll spend 2 nights (leaving everyone who hires a 4WD driver to take them to the site (arriving in late morning) jealous).
After White Pocket, we head back to Highway 89 and off towards Zion NP for a couple of nights. Again, a place we’ve never been to. We don’t expect to get to Zion early on the first day because the drive out of White Pocket will take some time (we’ll also need to air the tires back up) and we know of a great French bakery in Kanab we’ll undoubtedly stop at. And, of course, the drive into Zion is supposed to be spectacular and we’ll be taking our time since we won’t be leaving Zion the same way we came in. It may sound stupid, but we’re only really going to have one full day in Zion. From the stories we’ve heard about how beautiful it is (I’ve only quickly driven by it once) that’s a shame. From the stories we’ve heard about the crowds, that’s likely going to be enough for us. Hopefully it’s not as bad as they say and we’ll also have an opportunity to photograph in the first evening and again, the last morning.
From Zion we take the short drive to another favorite - Snow Canyon. Which is where we’ll spend a couple of nights
If worst comes to worst and we can’t tear ourselves away, we’ll try and stay another day/night (then again, there’s that Dark Skies location in Nevada). Eugene being what it is, the local government does not celebrate Columbus Day, so Ann has a work day on Monday (well, so do I too). So whether we stay an extra day and get home on Sunday or leave as planned and get home on Saturday depends on how we’re feeling by the end of the trip.
Who knows if I’ll manage to prepare any blog posts along the way, but never say never. I am hoping to be better about downloading and looking at my images. Maybe that will motivate me to post.
Either way, it should be a mighty fine 2019 Grand Fall Adventure!