in october of 2011 i took a trip back home to utah to visit the southeastern corner of my home state. my dad and i drove down with plans to visit some of the anasazi indian ruins in the area and also to see some of the landscape in that part of the state.
our first stop was the "valley of the gods" - it's kind of a smaller version of monument valley however, smaller is a relative term here... the tops of the buttes are about 1000 feet above the valley floor.
there's a dirt road that takes you through the monuments of the valley, this was our first stop as we got closer to the formations.
as we got worked our way around the valley we noticed a storm coming in over the valley and quickly jumped out to get the shot. mine didn't turn out but my dad was able to get a great shot of the rain coming down over the west end of the valley.
after visiting the valley of the gods we headed up to cedar mesa to see a some anasazi cliff dwelling ruins. the first is called fallen roof ruin.
over the years the layers of sandstone have fallen away revealing the mineral-encrusted layers beneath.
this ruin is appropriately called house on fire. the wide angle lens accentuates the layers of stone radiating out from the ruin.
the trick to catching these ruins at the right time is to be there in the late morning. the sun shines on the opposite side of the wash and reflects the warm light up onto the ruins.
after cedar mesa we drove up to canyonlands national park. we intended to catch the sunset looking west off of the green river overlook. the sun never showed up but i'm glad i took a shot anyways - i like how it turned out.
early the next morning we got up early to catch the sunrise at mesa arch but we couldn't squeeze ourselves into the line of tripods that were already there so we hightailed it to our plan b - dead horse point. we got there just as the sun was peeking over the la sal mountains.
i think it's just about time to start planning the next excursion... just not sure where. any suggestions?
