Dream, plan, go: Explore the world with nature travel photographer Tom Dempsey. Buy images from galleries.
Visit Utah, USA, for the world’s best concentration of amazing desert canyon scenery. Impressive parks include: Zion, Bryce, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Canyonlands, Arches, Goblin Valley, Newspaper Rock, Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Lake Powell, Capitol Reef, and Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area.
Photos from Zion National Park, Springdale, Utah, by Tom Dempsey: The Court of the Patriarchs tower over the North Fork of the Virgin River. Hike the West Rim Trail to Angels Landing, Scout Lookout, and beyond, with snow on ground. A seasonal waterfall plunges from Weeping Rock. West Rim Spring plunges in a seasonal waterfall over desert varnish on a Navajo sandstone cliff seen from the Temple of Sinawava. Lichen grows into polygons. Snow melts on Checkerboard Mesa. Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja) flowers bloom.
Unusually diverse plants and animals congregate at Zion, where the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert meet. A free shuttle bus greatly improves park ambiance with quieter roads and less crowding.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Sunrise and sunset make great photo opportunities in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. For example, sunset spotlights eroded hoodoos in the Queen’s Garden (one appears like a profile of Queen Elizabeth with gown). Bryce is actually not a canyon but a giant natural amphitheater created by erosion along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The ancient river and lake bed sedimentary rocks erode into hoodoos by the force of wind, water, and ice.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a large, wild park with great hiking in desert and slot canyon scenery in southern Utah. Approach most sights via dirt roads (often impassible when wet), or some on paved roads. These photos by Tom Dempsey are from recommended hikes to Willis Creek slot canyon, Bull Valley Gorge, Lower Calf Creek Falls, and Rimrock Hoodoos.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Photos from Canyonlands National Park, near Moab, Utah, by Tom Dempsey: Mesa Arch, sunrise, White Rim Road, Grand View Point Overlook on Island in the Sky, Colorado River canyons, Orange Cliffs Overlook, Green River in Stillwater Canyon, snowy Henry Mountains, Intrepid Potash Inc. Cane Creek Facility, snow on La Sal Mountains. Nearby, Dead Horse Point State Park provides a dramatic overlook of the Colorado River and high mesas and cliffs of Canyonlands National Park.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
My wife Carol and I enjoyed staying in our Volkswagon Eurovan Camper at comfortable Arch View Resort, an RV park 10 minutes north of Moab on Highway 191, halfway between Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Arch View Resort has a quieter setting than busy Moab, pleasant views, and full services (unlike nearby National Park campgrounds): 14 cabins, 42 full hook ups for RV water and electricity, 20 tent areas, tree lined spaces, hot showers, general store, laundry, Shell gas station.
Starting an hour before sunrise, we drove from Arch View Resort up to photograph Mesa Arch in Canyonlands NP. Standing room for the best photographs at Mesa Arch viewpoint is limited to about a dozen people looking through the arch to distant sandstone buttes. On Palm Sunday April 9, 2006, Mesa Arch was crowded with other photographers until an hour after sunrise when I could finally move in my tripod. If you want the best tripod spot and fewer photographers, try arriving 40 minutes before sunrise, midweek, and avoid Easter week.
Photos from Arches National Park, Utah, by Tom Dempsey: the Windows Section, Balanced Rock, Skyline Arch, Double Arch, South and North Windows, Turret Arch, Courthouse Towers, the Three Gossips, Entrada Sandstone eroding into arches, towers, and buttes, snowy La Sal Mountains
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Admire fanciful hoodoos, mushroom shapes, and rock pinnacles in Goblin Valley State Park, in Emery County between the towns of Green River and Hanksville, in central Utah. The light-colored Curtis Formation caps the reddish-brown suite of rocks called Entrada Sandstone where the park goblins form. On the desert floor bloom vetch flowers, in the pea family. Snow caps Mount Ellen, at the northern end of the Henry Mountains, rising prominently south of the park.
A short drive from Goblin Valley State Park Campground is a great 9 mile loop hike up Little Wild Horse Canyon and back down Bell Canyon. Scramble up and down sandstone ledges, through occasional shallow water holes and fascinating narrow slots. The Navajo and Wingate sandstone of the San Rafael Reef was uplifted fifty million years ago into a striking bluff which now runs from Price to Hanksville, bisected by Interstate 70 at a breach fifteen miles west of the town of Green River. The San Rafael Reef (and Swell) is one of the wildest places left in Utah.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Photos from Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument, Utah, USA, by Tom Dempsey: The cliffs that enclose the upper end of Indian Creek Canyon are covered by hundreds of ancient Indian petroglyphs (rock carvings), one of the largest, best preserved and accessible groups in the Southwest USA. The petroglyphs have a mixture of human (feet, figures), animal (deer, pronghorn, buffalo, horse), abstract and material forms of uncertain meaning. Starting about 2000 years ago, humans have chipped away the dark natural desert varnish to reveal lighter colored Wingate sandstone beneath.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Photos from Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell, in Utah and Arizona, include: Willow Creek Canyon, Broken Bow Arch, Llewellyn Gulch, petroglyphs of bighorn sheep chipped into desert varnish, pink cactus flower, frog held in hands, Bishop Canyon, LaGorce Arch. An Anasazi kiva (ceremonial room) was restored at Three Roof Ruin, on Escalante River Arm of Lake Powell.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Evocative sandstone patterns exfoliate from fossilized sand dunes in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area overlaps both Arizona and Utah. Fossilized sand dunes have eroded into the Coyote Buttes striated formations such as “The Wave.” Over 190 million years, ancient sand dune layers calcified into rock and created “The Wave” in the northwest corner of Arizona near the Utah border. Iron oxides bled through this Jurassic-age Navajo sandstone to create the salmon color. Hematite and goethite added yellows, oranges, browns and purples. Over thousands of years, water cut through the ridge above and exposed a channel that was further scoured by windblown sand into the smooth curves that today look like ocean swells and waves. For the permit required to hike to “The Wave”, contact the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), who limits access to protect this fragile geologic formation.
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
(Browse, Pause, or Play the gallery above. Or click to enlarge its photos in GALLERIES mode, where you can also Add to Cart.)
WordPress Themes by Graph Paper Press All content © 2012 by PhotoSeek | World Travel Photo Gallery, Tips, Classes, Best Digital Cameras Reviewed