I loved the fallen leaves on snow. Here’s my favorite shot.
Cottonwood Leaf on Snow
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My favorite image of Calf Creek Falls turned out to be a quick shot of Bill Lewis taking his photo.
Hands down, the most exciting photo day for me during our Escalante trip was a drive on side road off Hwy 12 (no name in order to protect location). I had asked to stop so I could photograph a spectacular Cottonwood tree and we stumbled upon several photo ops. Besides the amazingly large Cottonwoods, there was a very cool small slot canyon but the most exiting for me was what appeared at first glance to be a miniature Indian Ruin. As I got closer, I noticed dung everywhere so being crazy about Woodrats, I immediately thought it must be a midden. I wrote to a photographer friend, Bruce Taubert, who I thought might know because he’s an Arizona Game and Fish guy but he wasn’t sure so he forwarded my note to Randy Babb who currently works for AZ Game and Fish. (Randy is also a fantastic photographer!) Here’s his answer: “There are at least two woodrat species (pack rats) that are found in that area. I believe that what you found is an ancient nest or midden. I don’t see any fresh signs of activity in the pictures (very nice photos by the way) such as scattered droppings, twigs or limbs or other vegetative debris that nests are constructed of. Some of these prehistoric middens can be 100’s if not 1000’s of years old. See Van Devender’s packrat book for more details on how these middens are used to determine past environmental conditions.” “My first impression was exactly yours…it looked like a miniature Indian ruin.” Click Image for Slide Show (click play and use arrow keys if desired)  click image for slideshow OK…who else besides me thinks this is exciting We’ve had almost an inch in about 24 hours and it’s still raining. As much as I wanted to get out and take photos of a wash running, it’s raining too hard! So I pointed my camera at the patio
Yesterday morning at Rock Knob I found everything I had seen on Friday except Poppies and Lupine which aren’t quite ready but I was excited to see Wild Cucumber in bloom! Wild Cucumber (Marah gilensis) With nothing else new, I spent some time playing with depth of field (DOF). The fun has begun Chris and I hiked the North Access trail of the Preserve late yesterday. Here’s what I spotted.
Despite gloomy weather predictions for our week in Escalante, we had four beautiful and sunny days. By the fifth day, though, there was 90 percent chance of snow so a couple of us decided to go home early. Below is what we encountered during the first leg of our trip. Even though I was riding with someone who drove in snow most of his life, I was still very nervous!
One of my goals during this trip was to get shots of bare cottonwood trees. A highlight of our trip was a 7 mile round trip hike to the Lower Falls of Calf Creek.
Two images from my current trip to Escalante. Internet is close to dial-up so not much text today.  Escalante River |
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