Some Extraordinary Flowers

High in the Wasatch Mountains of Northern Utah, we found these extraordinary wildflowers. They have three different colored flowers on the same plant. They are really small and you have to bend down and look closely at them to even see the flowers at all. This points out the huge variety of wonderful things there are to see if you take the time to walk around and look carefully.

4th of July

I doubt that we will have any fireworks this year for the 4th of July. We live in a neighborhood where they are banned because of fire danger. Taking photos of fireworks is just a matter of leaving your shutter open for as long as necessary to capture an image. I experiment with different times and get a lot of different effects.

Driving Utah Roads

This is about as far from driving on a freeway as it is possible to get without a four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle. This is actually one of the better dirt roads I have driven over the years, but it is a little nerve racking. I don't know what is worse driving up the road or trying to drive down. This is the Burr Trail. It is known as a Utah Scenic Backway, as opposed to a Scenic Byway. If you like spectacular scenery and a challenge driving, think about driving in Utah.

The Waterpocket Fold Unfolds

There is a long dirt road that runs down the length of the Waterpocket Fold. The last time we drove down that road, we passed a few dozen cars and trucks. This dramatic geological feature is probably one of the largest and least known such features in the world. Here the earth was pushed up in a fold that stretches for over 100 miles. From space this feature looks like a long light-colored line and from most of the road, it looks like a low ridge. It is only when you walk into or drive into the unassuming hill that you begin to get an idea of its complexity. The reason it is called the Waterpocket Fold is because the tilted rock layers catch rainwater in profusion. The Fold is lined with narrow box canyons and slot canyons. Most of the Fold is in the Capital Reef National Park, but far off of the paved tourist part of the Park.

Eastside of the Waterpocket Fold

Of the millions of tourists who visit the National Parks in Utah there are only a small handful that experience the really dramatic parts of the state. The Waterpocket Fold stretches for nearly a hundred miles down through central Utah. Almost all of it is not easily explored except on foot. It contains some of the most dramatic landscapes in the world. My exploration of the Waterpocket Fold is just beginning.

Kodachrome Basin Pipe

Many of the views experienced in Kodachrome Basin State Park are confusing. The rock formations are so from any normal landscape view, the confusion of images can be overwhelming. You can find yourself without the ability to focus on any one part of a scene. Your impression is that there are an abundance of details and no overall picture. At the same time, when you take a photo, you abstract part of the image into its constituent parts and fail to see the complex whole.

Petroglyph Imagination

It is hard to imagine what some of the petroglyphs in the Nine Mile Canyon in central Utah were supposed to represent. This was one of the more interesting examples. Unfortunately, this is also an example of the damage that is being done by thoughtless visitors. You can see some markings on the rock that are obviously newly added. the one dot to the extreme right is evidence of a bullet. We saw several sites that had been shot at multiple times. It is likely that the two marks near the head of this unusual petroglyph are also bullet marks. I think it is interesting that you can get five years in jail and a $250,000 fine for copying a video CD, but the penalties for defacing irreplaceable native art are hardly enforced and usually treated as misdemeanors.

Mountain Roads

Over my lifetime, I have become accustomed to driving on dirt roads. Some of them are in excellent condition. This one is not. Many have been two tracks across the desert and mountains. This road is somewhere in between a two track and one that is well maintained. It is helpful to drive a truck or high-clearance vehicle and it is further helpful to have driving nerves of steel. Most dirt roads take you to places where there are a lot fewer people than a mall on a weekend. I am mostly a dirt-road type of person. I haven't been to a mall on a weekend for as long as I can remember and I just drove up to this beautiful location on a very bad dirt road about a week ago.

The Old Homestead

The dry climate of the Southwest is conducive to the preservation of wood and metal. In most parts of the United States, this fence would have long ago deteriorated and disappeared under a new layer of vegetation. At the same time, metal machinery including old cars and farm equipment are also common. I like the form and coloring of old wood and utility of the fence design. Even though this particular corral is abandoned, there are many from the same time period that are still in use.

Balanced Rock in Nine Mile Canyon

Nine Mile Canyon in central Utah, starts out as a shallow valley with some interesting rock formations. As it nears its confluence with the Green River, the canyon deepens and becomes deep and narrow and more like the other canyons in the area. The rock walls of the canyon have been used for a variety of rock art, some very new and other dating back well over a thousand years. This particular balanced rock formation is surrounded by petroglyphs.

The Old Barn

The tumble-down old barn is almost an American icon. I am aware of several within a few miles of my home in Utah Valley. But they are scattered across the entire country. When I was very young, we had an old barn out in the back part of our property. My father finally sold the entire structure to someone who arrived one day with jacks and huge timbers. They raised the whole structure off the ground and rolled it away on huge trailers. I don't know where the barn went, but I will always remember playing in its shady interior. It seems that many of these buildings finally outlast their utility and fall into disrepair. Apparently, the land they occupy is not valuable enough to act as an incentive to tear down the structure.

The Wasatch Range

The Wasatch Mountains run north and south and form the eastern boundary of the Great Basin Region and the western edge of the Rocky Mountains.  The highest peak is Mount Nebo at 11,928 feet. The lower slopes of the mountains are covered with thick vegetation while above the treeline, the rocks are rugged and bare. The large U shaped valleys were formed by glaciers and the last remnant of those same glaciers is just now disappearing from the upper slopes of Mount Timpanogos. If I can manage from getting lost on the back roads, I can be deep in these mountains in less than half and hour from my home.

Evening at Silver Lake

After a long day, we took a short hike up in the Wasatch Mountains. The sun had already set below the high ridge to the west and we were left with the reflections and indirect light on the high peaks. The air was cool and still and enjoyed the vast distances and the changing shapes of the clouds. A priceless moment in a busy and complicated life.

Summer in the Wasatch

We took a quick trip into the Wasatch Mountains. Our last trip up the canyons had been with snow still on the ground. But now we were in the middle of the summer green and lovely weather. The mountains are surprisingly rugged given the big wall appearance of the Wasatch front along the valleys. We drove on tiny dirt roads way back into the mountains and found the area full of visitors. There were traffic jams at some of the narrow parts of the road. In the dark, trying to drive home, we got lost on the wrong road and ended up in the middle of the mountains many miles from where we needed to be. We had a long, dark drive home when we finally got turned around properly.

The Mummy

Sometimes when you take a photo, the appearances can be deceiving. This unusual rock formation is called the Mummy. It is located in Nine Mile Canyon, right next to a huge natural gas well with a fenced compound. I had to crop the photo to get rid of the fence in the photo. Most of the images you see today have been manipulated in some form or another. I can tell when a photo has been manipulated about 90% of the time after having worked with Photoshop and Lightroom for all these years.

The Big Hunt from Nine Mile Canyon

If you don't mind driving across the state on a one-day trip, you can see a lot of unusual scenery in Utah. This is a place called Nine Mile Canyon. But the drive into this canyon is almost fifty miles long. This is called "The Big Hunt" and is dated between 900 and 1200 AD. It comes from the Fremont tradition of art. It is a big panel. The Canyon is located in east central Utah, just north of Price. If the land had not been privatized early in Utah history and was not now full of oil wells and natural gas wells, it would be a prime candidate for a national park or monument. There is a clam that this is one of the sites with the most rock art in the United States, but there are other locations with similar collections. The rock art is hard to spot without a lot of climbing and walking along steep grades and over streams and rocks.

Almost Impossible

Sometimes the rocks on the Colorado Plateau seem to verge on the impossible. All you have to do is walk a few more feet and the scene will change completely. Sometimes, when I take a photo, I know that the scene is special. Other times, I take a series of photos and none of them seem just right. Here the landscape draws you into the view of the spectacular rock formation in Kodachrome Basin State Park at the very southern edge of Utah.

Canyonlands Vista

The vast distances involved in a photo such as this one always seem to have a blue cast. The reason is very simple. The light coming from the distant mountains is colored by the same process that makes the sky blue. You normally do not see the blue cast because the amount of air between you and any given object is relatively small. It is only when these distances are visible that the colors shift towards blue. This is Canyonlands National Park in southern Utah.

Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island

Of course the color here is predominantly blue. The wind was blowing onshore very hard and the spray from the waves was creating a light fog just off the shore. This is a contrast with the bright sunshine and beautiful colors of the landscape out my window today in the mountains of Utah.

Tidal Flat

At some places along the coast of Vancouver Island, the slope of the shore is so shallow that the tide change reveals almost a mile of flat sand. The change in the tide can be as much as 14 feet or 43. meters in some areas. It is very interesting to walk out to the edge of the ocean and look at all of the plants and animals left behind by the retreating water. The surface of the sand is firm and it is relatively easy to avoid the shallow tidal pools that remain. The tide comes back in rather quickly and so when the tide turns, it is a good idea to start walking towards the shore.

Seascape

There is an extreme contrast between living next to a mountain range with high peaks and snow and looking out over the ocean. We have been having rain showers move through the area along the mountains lately and I guess this view of the Pacific Ocean explains a lot about why I live in the mountains rather than along the seashore.

Amphitrite Point Lighthouse, Uculuelet, British Columbia

We often form mental images of different things by association. The Amphitrite Point Lighthouse, Uculuelet, British Columbia does not match our mental image of a lighthouse. Neither does the location seem to match the usual conception. We spent some time climbing around on the rocks only to discover a poorly placed sign advising us that the rocks were slippery and dangerous.

Canyon Walls

There are so many details in this image it is almost overwhelming. You probably will not notice the white flowers in the foreground. You will notice the strange protruding rock formations and the texture of the sandstone walls. This is a box canyon and we are only a short distance from the end of the canyon. It is right around the next bend. There is so much to see and explore it is beyond comprehension. This photo was taken in the Kodachrome Basin State Park in southern Utah.

Tulip Contrast

What I like about photography is the ability to see contrasting textures. Here we have the contrast between the beautiful tulips, the green of their stems, the dark blue of the container and the cement and wood backdrop. The colors are also an important part of the composition.

Shamrocks

Some plants have an entire universe of cultural associations. If we called this clover, it would not be the symbol of Ireland and St. Patrick. There is no consensus as to which variety of clover is the "true" shamrock. You can take your pick, so to speak: Trifolium dubium, Trifolium repens, Trifolium pratense, Medicago lupulina, Oxalis acetosella. None of these is the same as the ones in the photo above.

Apples

We have been having a succession of cultural adjustments is moving from the low desert to the mountains. One of these has been the availability of some kinds of fruit. In Mesa, Arizona we hardly ever purchased an orange or any citrus fruit because we had our own trees. Here in Utah, citrus it relatively expensive so we have purchase a lot more apples and other more northern, cooler climate fruit. It has been quite a change.

A Dramatic Canyon

The contrast between this Canadian canyon and those in my own desert Southwest of the United States is so great that it is hard to imagine they are on the same planet. The obvious difference is the amount of rainfall and the average annual temperatures. In the Phoenix, Arizona area, where I lived most of my life, the average rainfall is about 8 inches a year. Here on Vancouver Island the average rainfall is between 260 inches on the west coast to some areas in Saanich Penninsula with 25 inches a year. This compares to the annual average in Provo, Utah where I now live of about 20 inches a year. Hence, the contrast.

Not Always Obvious

We came upon this sign as we were walking across a bridge over the Englishman River on Vancouver Island in Canada. Usually, like the signs in Arizona that say "Ice may be present in Winter" these types of signs are obvious. In this case, the placement of the sign was puzzling. There are no steep cliffs evident. However, if I turned around and looked the exact opposite direction, I would have seen a steep cliff. I might also note that all cliffs are steep. That seems to be the nature of cliffs in general. I guess it was important to let me know that this particular cliff was steep for some reason.

Englishman River, Vancouver Island

In the desert SouthWest of the United States, we had slot canyons and you can tell the level of the floods by the tree trunks caught in the canyon walls, sometimes thirty feet up the walls of the canyon. I assume that the logs caught here above the water reflect the same flood possibilities. I have seen flash floods in the desert but I have not been to Canada enough to see any of these rivers in flood stage, but I imagine it is pretty scary.

Multiple Faces in the Moss

Study the moss covered rock for a few minutes. If you are like me, you will begin to see multiple faces of animals and people. If you look further in the image, you will see even more faces. I am very familiar with this phenomena, I see faces all around in almost any random pattern I look at. The phenomenon is called pareidolia. I do have to keep reminding myself that the faces are not really there.

The Texture of the Rocks

We were scrambling around on these rocks next to the Pacific Ocean coast of Vancouver Island and found them to be very sharp and dangerous. I am guessing that the sharp edges of the rocks were caused by fracturing due to freezing and thawing cycles. This was a very picturesque area, especially with the sea stacks in the distance. The day was brilliantly sunny for a change but road construction in the area limited our options for visiting the coastline.

Sandstone and Clay

When I was quite young, I remember riding a bus from Salt Lake City to Phoenix. I was sitting by an older lady who made some disparaging comments about the desolate, desert landscape we were traveling through. I can remember my reaction was instantly one of defense. I don't think I was successful in convincing the lady of the beauty of the dry, rocky desert we were traveling through. But I did realize, even from my youth, that the desert had its own unique appeal. There is nothing ordinary or common about the deserts in Arizona or Utah. Every part of both states has its own appeal. I love visiting the desert and I will as long as I am able.

Dried Mud Still Life

I have been fascinated all my life at the way mud dries and cracks. We used to call this puzzle mud and carefully pick up the pieces to see how they were formed. I was interested to see my grandchildren doing exactly the same thing with this mud deposit. I also like the rich brown colors and the abstract shape of the wetter part of the mud. Beauty, color and texture are everywhere you look.