Zion Naional Park and Horseshoe Bend

I decided to take yesterday off and do some advanced planning. I only had a vague ida of where I was going next, and no idea of where I would be staying, so a bit of organizing was in order. Today I got an early start from Las Vegas and was in Zion National Park by noon. In Zion, you have to take the park shuttle buses to get to some of the scenic viewpoints. They were crowded and hot, but I rode one up as far as I wanted to go, then got out to shoot and caught the downward shuttle to the next stop. Then I would catch the next shuttle again and go down one more stop to shoot. I managed to get all of what I wanted without having to wait too long for shuttles.

I departed Zion and headed to Page Arizona where I will spend 2 days. The only thing that I managed to get done today in Page was a sunset shot of Horseshoe Bend. I will shoot it again tomorrow in the daylight, and with the DJI Inspire. I will also shoot in some of the slot canyons on Navajo Land. You can’t go into the area without a Navajo guide, so I have arranged guides for Cathedral Canyon in the AM and Antelope Canyon in the afternoon. I will do Horseshoe Bend again in between the two canyon trips. It will be a busy day.

Zion from the high road:


Big Bend:


Like most canyons, a river runs through it:


Checkerboard Mesa:


The Horseshoe Bend cliffs at sunset:


Horseshoe Bend at Sunset:

Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park

This was a long day. My goal was to get from Fresno, Ca to Nevada with a swing up through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. I wound up behind the wheel for about 12 hours to cover that all in one day. Kings Canyon is pretty far off the beaten path. I don’t think I’d recommend doing all of this in one day. It’s not that there are that many things to shoot in the parks (at east compared to Yosemite). It’s just a lot of miles on twisty hilly small roads. I didn’t finally get in to Las Vegas until after 10:30 tonight. It’s hot here, still 95 at midnight. Tomorrow I will head Northeast into the Utah/Arizona canyon country.

This is the General Grant Tree, the one that instigated the initial protection of the Sequoias over 125 years ago. It is approximately 1650 years old. The only way to be absolutely sure of it’s age would be to cut it down and count the rings, but that would sort of defeat the purpose.:


This is one of the groves in the Forest of Giants. Didn’t see any Ewoks:


This black lizard is well camouflaged on a piece of burned wood:


Kings Canyon doesn’t have as many panoramic viewpoints as Yosemite. Too many big trees:


The Kings river flows through the center of the canyon:


The canyon was carved glacially like Yosemite, so it has some steep canyon walls:

Yosemite

I spent the night in Mariposa (ridiculously expensive), then headed up to Yosemite Valley after breakfast. In all of my California travels, I had never managed to make it to this corner of the state. I had been within 50 miles dozens of times, but never made the drive up to the Valley. It’s a truly lovely place, and probably worth all the hype that it gets, but also deserves the jabs it gets for being crowded. I’m glad I didn’t camp there, the campgrounds were all full and they reminded me of refugee camps with tents pegged next to each other in every direction. Not exactly a memorable wilderness experience. As the day progressed, more and more people came out to crown the trails and it got hotter and hotter, so by 1600 I had fortunately completed everything I felt I could do and bailed out. If you haven’t seen much of the great outdoors, Yosemite would be an OMGTISA experience for you. If you’ve been around a bit, then it’s still nice, but not mind blowing.

If you come in from the south, you get an initial view of the valley right after you exit the last tunnel, unsurprisingly, this is called the Tunnel View (not to be confused with tunnel vision) El Capitan on the left and Half Dome in the back Center:


The source of the Merced river is in the Yosemite Valley:


It makes a scenic foreground for El Capitan:


There are a couple places that you can get a nice reflection of El Capitan:


You can also get good views of Half Dome with the Merced River:


Lots of nice meadows give you good views of Half Home:


This deer walked right by me as I was heading down one of the trails to the river:


Yosemite Falls is an impressive drop, but it’s a dry year so June looks more like August. In August it will probably be almost dry:

Road Trip

Well, I’ve been quiet since my return to the US. That’s because I’ve been busy prepping for the trip I just started yesterday. It is a long looping journey down through Oregon to the Northern California coast, through the Redwoods, then East to Yosemite (and maybe Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, then to the deserts and canyon lands of Arizona, New Mexico and Southern Utah. And finally, up through Utah and Southern Idaho to re-enter Oregon from the East and head back to Portland. This is a road trip in the classic American Style. I’m driving the whole loop and camping in many of the locations. My first stop was in the Redwoods near Crescent City, California.

My First Campsite:


Afternoon light in the Redwoods:


Yes, there’s wildlife in America too! Here is a portion of an Elk Herd I encountered:


Some ferns in the Redwoods:


A grove in the Avenue of the Giants:

Ranthambhore

I’ve uploaded the final installment of my little India Trilogy. This time it's wildlife in Ranthambhore National Park in the midst of Rajasthan's heat and dust. Ranthambhore is a huge park dominated by a 10th century fort that gives the park its name. It's loaded with wildlife. Langur monkeys are prevalent as well as two species of deer, Sambar and White Spotted, and some Indian Antelope are present in smaller numbers. But the big draw in the park is the Tiger. It's one of the best places in India to see them, though sightings are not guaranteed and sometimes very far away. With that in mind, I was hopeful that in five days I would manage to get at least a sighting or two, but I was quite fortunate to have sightings on 4 of my 5 days there, and a couple fairly close.

You can watch the embedded version of the video in my website, or see it directly on my Vimeo channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/ranthambhore.

Enjoy!

Cloud Bound

This is the second of my three little India videos. In this episode, I'm cloud bound high in the Himalayas on the border between India and Nepal. Actually, quite a bit of this was filmed in Nepal, but India was just on the other side of the trail. Since I was besieged by clouds that left me in a whiteout for a few days, the only option I had was to shoot some Time Lapse scenes of the clouds flowing up the valleys below and over the ridge tops. This part of the world looks remarkably like my home turn in the Oregon Cascade Mountains. Just a little bit higher. Much of this was filmed at an altitude that would be about 1000 ft above the summit of the tallest mountain in Oregon. In the end, I did finally have a couple hours of clear skies in Darjeeling and was able to see the section of the Himalayas I had come to view. The tallest of the mountains in those scenes is called Kangchenjunga, and is the third highest mountain in the world (behind Mt. Everest and K2).

You can see the video in the Travel tab on this website, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/darjeeling

Sacred Ganga

I've just finished three short videos of my Indian Subcontinent transit. I've split this into three parts because each region is so vastly different from the others. I'll upload them, one a day, over the next three days.

This first video covers my visit to Varanasi. The Ganga River (Ganges for westerners), India's most sacred river, flows past Varanasi and is a pilgrimage destination for Hindus. They come to bathe in the Ganga, and they also come, if they can manage it, at the end of their life to have their ashes spread on the waters. A series of stone steps, called Ghats, line the river frontage and early every morning crowds come to pray and bathe in the sacred waters.

You can see the video in the Travel tab on this website, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/varanasi