Wonders of the Wild West

If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep, then surely the journey of FOUR thousand miles begins with a good rental car!  I had a meeting in Dallas this week with Touch A Life Foundation to talk about doing some future work with them in Africa and Southeast Asia.  Then I headed to Oklahoma City to shoot a wedding.

Then...   I sort of forgot to stop driving.  Did you ever need to just clear your head and put some miles under you?  I did.  After the wedding I woke up the next day before dawn and headed west.  A thousand miles later, I ended up in Page, Arizona, base camp for the Antelope Canyons.  They've been photographed pretty heavily over the years, so I guess I just wanted to put my own personal stamp on them.  You can see some samples below, i'm in love with the colors.

After that, I headed over to Monument Valley and stayed at a place called The View.  My God, there IS truth in advertising.  These two photos of the "Mittens" were shot right outside of the hotel.  It's a good thing too, I went out about an hour before sunrise and it was almost single digit temperatures.  After the good light disappeared, I went back to the hotel and had breakfast.

I've criss crossed the country in planes several times and at 35,000 ft and almost 500 mph the world looks small and goes by fast.  After 60 hours of driving I have a new appreciation for just how BIG and beautiful America really is.  It was a great trip, but if you're in a hurry, take the plane :-)  The drive home was a bit of a "forced march", I saw two sunrises and two sunsets without sleeping, I might have even seen Jesus and the Buddha, i'm not sure, I was pretty delirious after driving 27 hours from Monument Valley to Kentucky in one sitting.

Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River.  Check out the detail shot below, it was frozen.

Delicate Arch is at an elevation of almost 5,000'.  It's a 1.5 mile hike straight up to this famous vantage point.  I'm in decent shape, but i'm not acclimated to these high elevations.  At one point, I honestly thought my heart was going to explode before I got to the top!  I had a long trip ahead of me, so I didn't wait for sunset, plus, it was extremely cold and icy.  Not a good place to get lost after the sun goes down.

Here are the Antelope Canyon shots.  I called the one above "The Face", do you see it?  The light comes down through a small crevasse on the surface and bounces around on the walls creating all of these amazing colors.  When I say small, I mean I had to squeeze through it to get down in the canyon.  My backpack was almost too much for this tiny space, but i'm so happy I went.

I love giving them names, I called this one "Eye of the Serpent".  It's just amazing to me that this is a bunch of sandstone with light bouncing around.