Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

Our original plan when we left Boulder, CO was to make it to Monument Valley in one long day’s drive. We left a little late though and ran some errands along the way so, in the end, we decided to spend the night in Moab, UT. We set up camp in a nice spot, had dinner in town, and then crashed early. The next morning we had some time to visit Arches NP at sunrise since we now had some extra time to finish the trip to Monument Valley later that day. I had been to Arches and Canyonlands NPs 2 years ago on a workshop with Andy Biggs (a few of my photos from that are here) so I was able to give Meredith a pseudo-tour. By the time we got up and made it into the park, we only got about half-way in before the sun was about to rise so we stopped at a place called The Windows. These two arches (North Window and South Window) are holes in a sandstone wall. One can hike up and through the North Window and then look back to frame Turret Arch in the distance. Here’s a picture of the guy next to me doing that:

The sun rose behind some cloud cover so we didn’t get the brilliant splash of golden orange that is possible here but we had fun nonetheless. Here’s my shot:

We also took some time to wander around near Turret Arch. The sun peeked out for a bit:

It also rained a bit on us but not for too long and it made for interesting light:

Unfortunately, those were the last clouds we saw for over a week which makes for some pretty boring photography if you want a sky in the picture. More on the weather coming up.

– Dave