desert

Total Solar Eclipse Road Trip

Total Solar Eclipse Road Trip

August 2017

Of course the total solar eclipse in August was on our bucket list! I elected not to attempt to photograph the main event – that’s a technical challenge better left to more accomplished photographers than I. Considering this once-in-a-lifetime experience of 100% totality would only last 2 1/2 minutes max, I really wanted to absorb the experience without fiddling with camera settings.

But the eclipse was a good excuse to embark on an epic road trip through the Southwest, affording me an opportunity to record some spectacular scenery. From Tucson we drove through the Salt River Canyon up to the White Mountains, and from there traveled through the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert en route to Gallup, New Mexico. I was booking our lodging on the fly, utilizing TripAdvisor on my iPhone en route, and our first night out we stumbled across an unexpectedly wonderful historic hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, on the old Route 66 but just a stone’s throw from the Interstate. Back in the 30s and 40s all the movie stars (John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Ronald Reagan to name a few) stayed at El Rancho Hotel. Our room for the night was named after Lee Remick. The ambience and nostalgic memorabilia were a treat to experience.

From Gallup we headed to Santa Fe, detouring to explore the cliff dwellings and petroglyphs of El Morro and Bandolier National Monuments. Santa Fe is always fabulous and we spent an extra day there, visiting a friend and enjoying a superb dinner at one of the town’s finest restaurants. Then on to Taos, followed by a long stretch of highway to our final destination in North Platte, Nebraska, where we joined an international group of eclipse watchers for the big event. Except – having arrived, the weather turned sour, with cloud cover forecast over the entire state of Nebraska on the day of the eclipse. With looming grey skies as well as predictions of massive traffic jams, Mike and I did a quick regroup and abandoned our tour after one day and headed west towards clearer skies forecast for Wyoming.

We drove some 500 plus miles that day and of course there was not a prayer of booking a last minute hotel room within 100 miles of the path of totality! Instead we found a sod farm that was offering overnight parking on the perimeter of their beautiful green grass. The main selling point was the row of porta-potties installed for the convenience of their guests. So for $100 we parked our Jeep by the field, spent $20 more for hamburgers from the grill, and then we settled into the front seat with pillows and blankets picked up at a local Walmart, and spent the night in the car.

Next morning we headed off at dawn to Glendo State Park in Wyoming where we connected with a group from the University of Arizona’s Space Grant Program, associates of Mike’s from work. They were participating in a balloon based experiment and were set up in a prime campsite within the park. Our friends met us at the entrance of the by now crowded park and ferried us in – enabling us to enjoy a spectacular and unobstructed view of the eclipse in 100% totality. Exiting the park at the end of the day was another story – it took nearly 3 hours to drive 3 miles back to the entrance. From there the Interstate 25 was crawling with traffic back to Denver, but fortunately we were headed in the opposite direction. We overnighted in Casper, Wyoming, where a room at the Days Inn cost more $$$$ than a night at a luxury hotel in Santa Fe had cost us the week before!

Heading home from Wyoming we took our time through the spectacular red rock country on the border of Utah and Arizona. Looking at the amazing colors and layers of the landscape, it is easy to see how Native American designs in pottery and blankets were inspired by the geology of this part of the country. Poor Mike, who was driving, was constantly being ordered to pull over to the side of the road so I could photograph another epic scene.

We spent a couple of nights in Monument Valley, first at Gouldings, another historic hotel with ties to the movie industry, and then at a fabulous modern hotel named The View, operated by the Navajo Nation, with every room offering a balcony and unobstructed view of Monument Valley in all its vast glory. We hired a Navajo guide to take us out for both a sunrise photography tour as well as a starlight tour of the park. My night photography results weren’t as consistent as in Maine and I only got a couple of shots that satisfied me – it’s really hard to lock critical focus on a distant star in the dark with aging eyesight! But I love the one shot that I did manage to pull off – and, again, spending hours under the starlit skies with only nature for company was well worth the experience.

From there it was straight home, a surprisingly quick 6 hour drive. We immediately went on a spree of binge-watching a trilogy of old John Wayne movies filmed in the red rock country of Monument Valley. I’m already making plans to return in 2018.

Slideshow:
[envira-gallery id=”9147″]

Posted by Carol in Arizona, Utah
Navajo Pony After A Dust Storm

Navajo Pony After A Dust Storm

 

True to the adage that one seldom explores one’s own backyard, I have lived in Arizona since 1958 and never once visited spectacular Monument Valley on the Arizona/Utah border. In 2012 that changed when I joined a photo workshop with like-minded photographers, and spent a week touring the highlights of this unique and beautiful area. On arrival we were hit with the frustrating realization that we were hard on the heels of massive dust storm that obliterated light and turned the sky yellow with blowing sand.

Not only did this compromise the scenery we hoped to photograph, it created a challenge for the camera gear which is easily damaged by the invasive grit. Changing lenses in the field was a recipe for disaster; the best solution was to carry two cameras each configured for different shooting scenarios.

A few days later the dust settled, the sky turned blue, and we discovered that the dunes had been swept clean into freshly rippled contours, a silver lining after all. Meanwhile I captured this image of a Navajo pony on the rez, haircoat embedded with red desert sand and eyes squinted against the blowing grit. I like his rough presence, bold shadow and the iconic landscape on the horizon.

Navajo Pony After A Dust Storm prints are available for purchase HERE

Nikon D3S, 1/750 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200, 44 mm (28.0-300.00 mm f/3.5-5.6 lens).

Photo is copyrighted and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Please respect.

 

 

Posted by Carol in Arizona, USA
Summer Nostalgia

Summer Nostalgia

It’s high summer here in Tucson. The clouds building up each the afternoon, the lightning flashing on the horizon and thunder rumbling in the distance – all are tantalizing hints of monsoon rainstorms. Sometimes there’s even a payoff with a sprinkle or a deluge, our reward for suffering through the high humidity of the season.

June as always was hot and dry, burning the spring flowers to a crisp. So it is a pleasure to go through my files and relive that glorious season of just a few months ago when the desert was bursting with color, blanketed in rampant wildflowers and cacti in vibrant bloom.

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Nikon D4, 105.0 mm f/2.8 @ 105mm, ISO 1600, f/3.5 @ 1/8000 sec, 0EV

I photographed the lavender Santa Rita prickly pear cactus with its profusion of yellow blooms, hand-holding a 105 mm lens to narrow the focus down to just a few very fine details. And I crawled on my belly at dawn with a wide angle 14-24 mm to capture a landscape blanketed in pink by a bumper crop of Mexican primrose.

Enjoy. I did.

Click on any photo below to open up a slideshow.

Posted by Carol in Arizona, USA
Coyote Visitors

Coyote Visitors

A pack of three coyotes came visiting the other day in casual search of a meal. It was broad daylight, almost noon. We watched through the window as a lot of digging and pouncing took place, eventually rewarded with the capture of a round tailed ground squirrel as a late-morning snack. I’m not too sorry about the rodent – coyotes have to eat, after all. The ground squirrels are cute but we have whole cities of them on our property, riddled with burrows and upheavals of dirt.

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Nikon D4, AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR @ 400mm, ISO 400 f/11 @ 1/750 sec, 0 EV

Eventually one of the threesome wandered over to the stone fountain just outside our bedroom window. I photographed him/her through the glass until the coyote finally went on its way, stopping en route to pick up this huge frog, some kind of leopard frog, that he must have snagged during an earlier fishing expedition and set aside for dessert. I’ll miss the very loud raucous croaking of that frog keeping us awake at night, but I’m sure another will move in shortly.

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Nikon D800, AF-S 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR @ 400mm, ISO 800 f/9.0 @ 1/800 sec, -2/3 EV

Click on any photo below to open up a slideshow and camera settings.

Posted by Carol in Arizona, USA