It wasn’t really my intention to go back to Canyonlands National Park: I just ended up there.
I’d seen a “Jug Handle Arch” on a map and decided to go there. I went right past it and never saw it. I saw this gnarly road and figured the arch must be somewhere up that road.
The road climbs up to the top of the canyon, affording a view back down it:
Yeah, it’s dry and desolate. Beautiful, but a stark, harsh beauty where water, and even life itself, is precious. Note, if you will, the color of the cloud bottoms. There is so much red rock in this country that the sun shining on it reflects upward and turns the cloud bottoms red.
A little bit later, the road went past Dead Horse Point State Park on its way to Canyonlands National Park. Since my visit to Canyonlands had been interrupted a few days before, I decided to skip Dead Horse for another day and finish what I’d started at Canyonlands.
Just past Canyonlands’ visitor center is an arch highly favored by photogs.
Photogs like to get here before sunrise. The sun comes up over the LaSal mountains over there and lights up the underside of this arch. I’ve heard it gets pretty crowded up there with each of them jostling for the best spot.
I never went back for sunrise; this is the only shot I got. It’s plenty pretty. One of the two spires in the mid distance that are lit up is called The Washer Woman. I guess it does look a little bit like someone carrying a laundry basket.
Towards evening I moseyed a few miles farther down the road, called the Island In The Sky road, to a viewpoint overlooking the Green River. Getting out of the Jeep, I overheard a conversation another photog was having with his wife, using the word “crepuscular.” I love that word. Photographers are definitely a crepuscular animal. And I think we and wildlife biologists are the only ones who ever use that word.
So here’s my crepuscular view of Canyonlands National Park from the Green River viewpoint. This is the country that John Huling made his music about. Indeed, they sell his CDs at the visitor center, or at least they did when I was there. Listen to an excerpt from “Return to Spiritlands” as you gaze at this next photo, which is larger than what I usually post here. You can click on it to zoom in and see a little more detail. Immerse yourself in it as you listen to the music clip:
From “Return to Spiritlands” by John Huling, 1998. Copied under Fair Use.
If you look carefully (you might have to click to zoom), you can see a road down there. It’s called the White Rim Road, and it’s a 4WD trail that is hundreds of miles long and takes days to traverse. It’s an adventure I want to take in the Jeep someday, camping along the way.
Years ago, I posted this shot on the now-defunct social media site Google Plus. It got the most “likes” I ever got from any of my photos.
And now, for my paid subscribers, here is the full-size, full-resolution version of this spectacular crepuscular photo. If you were a paid subscriber, you could zoom in to the photo and find the people who are camped down there:
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