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).