Valley Of Fire & Zion, Nevada and Utah, March 2013: Night Sky, Long Exposure, and Landscape Photos of the Parks
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 Thursday 21 March 2013 continued:This is a view from our hotel, which serves Bumbleberry Pie (never tried it), the setting sun illuminating The Watchman. George sat out on the balcony and watched the subtle shifts of light on the mountains. |
Title: The Watchman Star Trails I took 100 individual photos, but used less than half of them due to clouds moving in and dominating the frame. This was taken from the balcony of our hotel room in Springdale, Utah, illustrating that not all night sky photos involve traipsing around in the dark during freezing temperatures. |
 Friday 22 March 2013:Angels Landing was on the agenda. Lisa had been concerned about this hike the night before. She hiked up quite far, going up the switchbacks, Refrigerator Canyon, and up Walters Wiggles, but seeing how the remaining part of the hike looked, decided she would rest at Scout Lookout and read magazines and breathe in the magnificent views of Big Bend and Zion Canyon below. There are parts of the trail where one must wait for others to pass, and parts where there one clings to chains while trying not to notice the 1000-foot sheer drop just a few feet away. It's not for everyone, and I saw a few very scared hikers along the way. |
 This is a view of Big Bend, with The Organ below, as seen from Angels Landing. Spectacular. I ran into two girls that we had seen from Valley of Fire. I had taken two photos of them there, and then another here. When they went back to Germany, they would say that the same guy took photos of them wherever they went. |
 Although the Nikon D7000 is rather heavy for George and weighs more than he does, as he is a diminutive stuffed monkey, he managed to hold up the camera and click this photo, which shows some of Big Bend in the distance. |
 Coming back down from Angels Landing, looking back at Scout Lookout somewhere below, and below that to the right, Virgin River and the Riverside Walk, a walk which continues up to The Narrows and Wall Street 2-3 hours later. |
 I kept receiving offers from people to take my photo, so I took someone up on that. Angels Landing is in the distance, with much of Zion Canyon spread out below. Although some say that Observation Trail is more spectacular, it was difficult to imagine anything being more beautiful than this hike. |
 Coming back down Angels Landing, Matthew, a barefoot hiker, smiles at the beauty of the land. "I'm surprised more people aren't going barefoot," Matthew said, as at the time of this writing, Vibram Five Fingers and hiking and running barefoot have become quite popular. But indeed, he was the only one I saw that day going barefoot. Except for George, of course. |
And while on the topic of Appalachia, I decided to bring nothing but shirts from West Virginia on the trip. And four different sets of people on this hike commented on it, some saying they were from there, and others saying it was their favorite state and the most beautiful "...well, except maybe for Colorado," said one. People went for rafting or commented on how much nature was still in West Virginia. |
 Lisa hiking back down Refrigerator Canyon, having just descended from Scout Lookout through Walters Wiggles. |
Just after the tunnel, we parked and crossed the road to the Canyon Overlook Trail, a short one-mile round trip that offers spectacular views, looking back toward Zion Canyon. |
Two hikes in one day, Angels Landing and Canyon Overlook Trail were enough. We headed back down to Springdale and ate. But very quickly afterward, I headed back up with George. We had rock formations to light paint. We had night skies to photograph. We had the magnificent celestial movements to capture. |
Title: Lonely Tree of the Coyote God Go to Page 4 by clicking on the Stone People at the top or bottom of the page. |
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Valley of Fire State Park, Zion National Park, Nevada and Utah, March 2013
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And this is a view of The Watchman from our hotel later that evening.
And this is another photo that may appear on the 
After coming back down from Angels Landing, we drove through the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel, a 1.1 mile tunnel that was completed in 1930 to create direct access to Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon from Zion National Park for the burgeoning tourist industry. It is quite narrow by today's standards, and oversized vehicles must pay a fee to cross, after which traffic is stopped in the opposing direction until the vehicle has passed.
At Canyon Overlook Trail. So good. So right.
Heading back into Zion N.P., George and I ate (well, actually, I ate and he hung out, as he is a stuffed monkey), spoke to a friendly photographer and his wife from India, ate hummus, and read TapeOp while waiting for the sun to set. It was around freezing, but more than that, it was windy, so a few times, I hung out in the car and listened to Brian Eno or read TapeOp Magazine or ate. But most of the time, George and I watched the stars move across the sky.
