After our morning shoot at Snow Canyon, we took a hot shower and then headed up through Cedar City (to stop off for some great pizza) on our way to our next stop, Great Basin National Park.  The drive from Utah into Nevada was interesting and we timed our entrance into the park as several vehicles were departing the campground.  

Yet again, we found ourselves another great campsite (of which we’ll say more later), at the campground nestled at the bottom of a canyon between two mountains.

The next day was laundry day, but the big question was where.  Our next big destination that we’d decided to keep was Toroweap on the north side of the Grand Canyon.  We had a 2-night camping permit I secured a few months earlier.  However, given the (mis)adventure and the screws issue with the small pantry, I decided to give the route description a careful read.  The high clearance vehicle issue wasn’t a problem.  Nor was the description that the last half mile would require a 4 wheel drive vehicle.   Unfortunately, the description also said to expect at least a couple of hours of very heavy washboard road.  After discussing it a bit, we decided to play it safe and not put Beast through that sort of ride until we got her fixed up.  So where to?

The next leg of our journey would take us to Kodachrome Basin State Park and thereabouts.  This was one of the fixed points from our schedule that we’d retained (with at least one night reserved at the campground in Kodachrome) so it was time to move.

We were exhausted from the previous day’s shooting, so took our time getting up and out of the Grand Staircase-Escalante.  The drive was beautiful from Escalante to Cannonville - as I said, Hwy. 12 is one of the most scenic stretches of road you’ll find.  In Cannonville we wound up stopping by the Cannonville Visitor Center and walked away with big smiles on our face for a couple of reasons.

Given that the day photographing at Devil’s Garden along Hole in the Rock Road was so productive, it shouldn’t surprise you that the day provided us with great examples for our shooting the shooter series.

The first pair of images comes from early in the day as the sun’s first rays were catching the clouds.  I’d noticed the clouds behind me after I finished another image in the other direction and I swung the camera around, framed an image, shot it and realized that Ann was by the left-hand edge of the frame (hopefully nice and warm in her bright red down jacket).

This is going to be a fairly lengthy, image intensive post with over 25 images.  As I was going through my images to see which ones lept out at me, or would otherwise help me tell the story of the day, I wound up working on lots of different images.  None said, “this is the image of the day” though many were not bad at all.   Ultimately I wound up thinking that it had been a mighty fine day of photography.  About as good as it gets short of realizing you’ve made one of the best images you’ve ever made.  So I decided that the post would not just be about what happened that day, but about how a day can progress photographically, if things are working out well.

I wish I’d taken a moment to step back and photograph the row of photographers along the Snake River at Schwabacher Point or Oxbow Bend during our morning photo shoots at Grand Teton National Park a few years ago.  While the images we made those mornings were beautiful, what wasn’t shown was quite disturbing (not to mention the attitudes of some of the photographers).  It left us with the question of whether everyone was making the same photograph at the same time.  You can repeat that same concern about any number of places like Yosemite and elsewhere around the world.  

As Dan said in earlier blog posts, Joshua Tree National Park is a unique place.  

It has an incredible quality with amazing rock formations and almost silly, Dr. Suess-like trees.  The more you photograph in a place like this, the more you begin to feel its character and try to bring that to life in your images.   

We decided not to get out and photograph the next morning because it had rained and was was heavily overcast.  So after a quick stop at the Ranger Station to fill up on water, we headed out.

As we exited Natural Bridges National Monument and hit Highway 95, we turned right instead of left.  Out the window went our planned trip to head down Comb Ridge on its eastern side, stop in Page, Arizona to do laundry, camp at the base of the Vermillion Cliffs at the namesake national monument, camp at Point Sublime on the north side of the Grand Canyon, explore the Paria area of Vermillion Cliffs, and then drive up Cottonwood Canyon Road to Kodachrome State Park.  Instead, it was on to Hanksville and beyond, the only fixed destination being to wind up in Kodachrome State Park four days later.  Instead of heading south, we wound up going north.

Heading out from Valley of the Gods, my itinerary had us heading towards Comb Ridge, driving north along its western side, and then exploring a couple of sites we had visited during our trip to Utah a couple of years ago.

Our drive northward from the Expo took us from the forested mountains of Flagstaff to the desert mesas, canyons and valleys of northern Arizona and Southern Utah.  Our first stop was Monument Valley.

While Overland Expo West was great and informative, Ann and I were ready to get back to the adventure part of our trip.  Our next leg would take us north, and we’d spend the next few days exploring parts the Bears Ears National Monument.  To get there, we had to go through Monument Valley, famed for its use in John Ford westerns.  

But before we get back to the story, I thought it might be worthwhile to share one of the dilemmas Ann and I now have with Beast.  

Leaving my dad’s place in Phoenix, we headed up north to the Fort Tuthill County Park just south of Flagstaff where Overland Expo West 2017 was being held.  It’s one of the largest overland expos in the world with over 300 vendors (to include Sportsmobile) peddling pretty much anything you can imagine needing for overlanding.  In addition to the vendors, there are lots of courses to take, which was why Ann and I were so focused on being there with Beast.

Our next stop was Joshua Tree National Park where we spent a couple of wonderful days photographing in a new environment and where I had constant U2 of the brain (pretty much a non-stop loop of the instrumental leading up to the lyrics of “Mothers of the Disappeared” - much more melancholy and staid than I’d expected, I rather thought it would have been more driving like the lead into “Where the Streets Have No Name” or "Bullet the Blue Sky", but we don’t get to choose our earworms).

After our (mis)adventure, we were ready for something new.  Which was good, because our next stop was Joshua Tree National Park.  But before we tell that story, it’s time for a break and a new installment of Shooting the Shooter.

As you may have noticed (and I’ve definitely mentioned), Beast has a roof rack.  Several people have commented on how we could haul a lot of stuff up there and are shocked when we tell them that we can’t really.  Well, put anything up there and then expect to raise the roof.  That’s because the roof rack is near or at the maximum load the roof can raise with (approximately 150 pounds), though not nearly close to the carrying capacity of the roof (10,000 pounds).  Then we tell them that the purpose of the roof rack isn’t to carry stuff, it’s to carry us.  It’s a platform to photograph from.