I call it the Utah trip, but that's a little misleading. My friends Rob and Brad and I had rented a house in Kanab, so we were staying in Utah. We stayed in the same house that we stayed in last time, the one that Margarit and the girls and I stayed at back in early 2014. About half of our time in the area was actually spent in Arizona. The Utah-Arizona border is just a few miles south of town. On day three we were obviously in Arizona, at the north rim of the Grand Canyon National Park.
On this day, Monday October 19th, we stayed in Utah. We headed about 50 miles to the north of Kanab, to Cedar Breaks National Monument. It seemed that most of the population of Utah was decked out in blaze orange, packing a shootin' iron, and hauling a couple of ATV's out into the bush. This is the Utah deer hunt... a spectacle to be seen...! The deer leave the high country around the Cedar Breaks and head down towards the Arizona border. They winter in the lower elevations, near the Coral Pink Sand Dunes we were told. As they make their annual migration, every red neck with the good fortune of being drawn for a deer tag is waiting in the weeds with a loaded rifle. Not exactly the best time of year to be wandering around in the wilderness. The odds seemed pretty high that we might come down with a case of lead poisoning so we mostly tried to keep to the parks.
Cedar Breaks is situated at an elevation of over 10,000 feet. As we drove closer and closer the clouds became heavier and we started to get into some snow. The limited facilities in the park were essentially closed for the season, but we were free to wander around. We made a couple of stops, hoping to find something to photograph. The natural amphitheatre at the park looked pretty good, with a dusting of fresh snow, and some heavy clouds swirling about. But the winds were just too intense to consider setting up our big cameras. We retreated back down to lower elevations and decided to give Zion National Park a try.
Zion National Park is situated south of Cedar Breaks, but it was sort of a round about road that took us there. It is still at relatively high elevation, but considerably lower than Cedar Breaks, so it was quite a bit warmer and greener. It was obvious that significant rain had fallen here in recent weeks as there was water in all the washes, and some evidence of recent flooding. Zion has always been too busy for my liking. You need to park your vehicle in some parking lots and then ride shuttle buses up the Virgin River Valley to all the viewpoints and trailheads. At the beginning of November the shuttle buses stop running, and cars are allowed to drive up the valley... but we didn't have the option of waiting that long. When we were here in 2013 it was so busy that the parking lots were all full and everyone was being directed to park further away in the town of Springdale. We had no real desire then or now to battle the crowds and to try and transport large format camera gear on a tour bus. So, like last time we stuck to the Eastern Uplands of the park. It is still busy here, but fairly easy to find a place to park and to wander around. I find this area fascinating as the layered hills and buttes are in a state of petrified motion. We spent the rest of the afternoon photographing here before eventually heading back to Kanab in the evening.
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