Horseshoe Canyon, an outlying unit of Canyonlands National Monument, is isolated, hard to get to and worth the effort! The canyon, once known as Barrier Canyon, contains probably the largest and most striking painted rock art in all of the Southwest. The figures are amazing, many of them are larger than human size and having intricate details and evidence of various colors. I had been wanting to get to this place for more than five years. It was worth it, even on a very hot day and several hours of hiking into the canyon and back out.(click here).
Great Basin NP, Capitol Reef NP and More!
I spent several weeks in June and July exploring areas of eastern Nevada and southern Utah, including several national parks and national monuments. The trip started with a week at Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. To see the gallery of photos in and around Great Basin NP (click here). Here is a gallery of photographs from a week in and around Capitol Reef National Park(click here). Natural Bridges National Monument, east of Blanding UT and Valley of the Gods are full of unusual geologic beauty (click here). I’ll add the other parks/galleries in the days ahead, so please re-visit the website. As usual, I met many travelers, from the all over the United States and from abroad. They made the trip as enjoyable and memorable as the sights I visited. I hope many of them (you) have a chance to explore this website and enjoy again some of the beauty from these areas. Please email me if you have any interest in obtaining prints of your favorite photographs!
Jeff@blueskycamera.com
Four Corners Area – Bisti, Aztec, Mesa Verde, Howenweep and more
May 20,2017 –
The first couple of weeks in May were spent travelling in the Four Corners area (NW New Mexico, SW Colorado, SE Utah and NE Arizona). Greetings to those of you who I met along the way and thank you for taking time to visit the website. It was such a pleasure to meet people from different states and from Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, England and Australia. My travels included the Bisti Badlands Wilderness (click here), Aztec National Monument (click here), Mesa Verde National Park(click here), Canyons of the Ancients & Hovenweep National Monuments (click here), Navajo National Monument (click here) and some other locations(click here) along the way. I am working on getting photos from each area edited and onto the website. I will continue working on adding the photos and captions in the week ahead. I hope you enjoy going through them and have fun “re-living” some of the places you visited. If you have any questions or comments about the places I visited or about the photographs, please send me an email – Jeff@BlueSkyCamera.com
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More Grand Canyon
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November 22, 2016 – I recently spent several days camping at the South Rim and was able to explore quite a few areas between Hermit’s Rest and Yaki Point. The weather was clear all week, so my attention was on photographing from a number of locations at different times of the day, returning to some spots several times to see how the lighting changes from morning to afternoon. The greatest difficulty was the November sun coming up farther south than east and setting also in a more southerly location. The days were relatively short and catching parts of the canyon with just enough shadow, but not too much was quite challenging. The most recent thirty-five photos in the gallery represent this trip. The trip was capped-off with meeting friends who hiked out of the Canyon at South Kaibab Trail, after they spent a week hiking through remote portions of the Grand Canyon. (click here to view gallery)
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Northwest Arizona Backroads
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June 10, 2016 – This spring I spent several days in northwest Arizona, mostly in the rural Navajo areas this time. Rather than photograph the usual places (Canyon de Chelly), I wanted to really get far into the back country, explore it, and meet people out there. Wow! I saw things that certainly rival Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley: West and north beyond Many Farms; Northeast beyond Round Rock; and east past Lukachukai and over into the Red Rock and Cove area. I’ve combined those photographs in this gallery of NW Arizona (click here) . I think the most enjoyable part of this trip was seeing the herds of horses that live out in those open, un-fenced expanses. I was lucky to photograph some of the most beautiful horses I have ever seen (click here) . There were also lots of wildflowers in bloom, so I spent a lot of time getting those in focus (click here) , as well as a few nicely-placed trees (click here) . You can’t have livestock out there without having windmills and water tanks. Since some artistic Indians like to paint the tanks, I enjoyed taking photos of their work and made a gallery for those (click here) . I’ve also added more photographs that try to portray how native ways are part of the landscape (click here) . One of the highlights was meeting and talking to a Navajo woman who came by as I was photographing what appeared to be an abandoned homesite. It was where her grandparents had lived and where she had played as a child. That was a terrific reminder that places really aren’t abandoned out there, just temporarily uninhabited. On the trip, I took some photographs around Winslow, including the restored historic hotel, La Posada (click here). Also added a few to storm skies (click here) and horizons(click here) , too.
Patagonia Arizona Area
The Border***
April 9, 2016 – Despite strong winds for two days, I was fortunate to enjoy quite a variety of scenery in a recent trip to southern Arizona, around the small town of Patagonia. Nearby Patagonia State Park and the Sonoita Creek Nature Conservancy provided woodland, water, birds and flowers. South of Patagonia are the ghost town of Harshaw and the border community of Lochiel. I was lucky enough to see and photograph a family of Coati crossing the road near Harshaw. Although it is mountainous from Patagonia to Harshaw and on to Lochiel, the rolling hills and grassland of the beautiful San Rafael Valley spread out north of Lochiel and is the route travelled by the early Spanish explorers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the border region I enjoyed talking to a number of Border Patrol people, who have the exceedingly difficult task of covering hundreds of square miles of rugged terrain. (click here to view gallery)
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Grand Canyon in October and January
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March 11, 2016 – I updated the Grand Canyon Gallery with some photographs taken in October and January along the South Rim. In January I was up there a couple of weeks after a snowstorm and was able to get some photos showing how a little snow enhances the views and helps the photographic image. Somehow I got tree-happy on that trip and framed some of the photographs with the interesting trees (and former trees) that are along the canyon edge. I’m still trying to get up there for a big storm, so I can photograph the canyon engulfed in snow! Earlier, in mid-October, I happened to be up in Northern Arizona after a huge storm passed through. I spent a day along the South Rim, between Grand Canyon Village and Desert View, with incredible stormy skies, clouds, sun and shadows. The day ended with a beautiful sunset from Desert View. (click here to view gallery)
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Willcox, Arizona (Mt. Graham and Aravaipa Creek north; Chiricahua Mountains south)
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Mt Graham north; Klondyke/Aravaipa northwest; Chiricahua Monument southeast.***
February 28, 2016 – I recently spent several days in the area around Willcox, Arizona. North of Willcox is massive Mount Graham, one of Arizona’s “Sky Islands”, with diversity ranging from desert at 3,500 feet elevation to sub-alpine at over 10,000 feet. There was still snow up there and the road was closed in the upper reaches. I didn’t think to take my snowshoes when planning this trip to southern Arizona! Northwest of Willcox and serving as drainage for the west side of Mount Graham are Sulpher Springs Valley, the abandoned store at Klondyke and further on, Aravaipa Creek (click here) . South of Willcox are the Chiricahua Mountains, with Chiricahua National Monument and its unusual rock formations on the west side (click here) and Apache Springs and Fort Bowie National Historic Site on the east side.
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Sedona
Sedona Red Rocks* * * *
September 30, 2015 – Sedona has some of the most spectacular scenery in Arizona, especially considering how much there is in such a small area. Sedona attracts many tourists, artists and cosmic seekers which has resulted in a busy and interesting town with lots to see and do. Enjoy this new gallery I have started (click here)
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Chaco
Pueblo Bonito Ruins* * * *
September 19, 2015 –
Several years ago I traveled to one of the more isolated archaeological sites in the Southwest, but perhaps one of the most impressive. Chaco Culture National Historic Site has quite a number of well-preserved structures that are nearly a thousand years old. You will find in this gallery (click here) some photographs of the landscape and the structures.
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