Arches National Park, UT

Today's Photo - Skyline Arch, Arches National Park, UT















I got a fairly early start this morning & headed into Arches. Visiting Arches is probably the main reason for this trip. In 2004 my wife Carol was feeling bad & we decided after Zion to head home without stopping. I've always wanted to take more photographs of Arches, so here I am!

I used part of the morning as a scouting trip for Delicate Arch. The best time for photographs is late afternoon, so I wanted to choose which lens made the most sense & only take one during the hot afternoon. Looks like the 24-70 wins.

I also did the same for Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. A beautiful photograph is possible at sunrise at the arch. Of course since sunrise is at 5:55AM tomorrow & it takes around an hour to get there from the campground, it means an early day. I'll try! By the way, I really couldn't decide which lens, the 17-35 or the 24-70 worked best at Mesa Arch, but since it is a much shorter hike (and cooler) I'll take both.

I took a few different angles at Balanced Rock because it looks so different depending on where you are on the trail around it. Although you can see the Delicate Arch from a short walk from the road, it takes a telephoto lens (in this case a 200mm) to shoot it & it isn't all that interesting an image. To really shoot it you have to take the trail to the arch itself, a 3 mile hike with a 480' gain in height. Not as bad as Angel's Landing in Zion, but a good climb over slickrock. The heron was at a pond at the trail head for Delicate Arch.

All the other arches are fairly short hikes in from the trail heads. I'm not sure how Don managed to get into Skyline Arch for the photo I took on our 1996 trip, but he did. No one was there today!

Anyway, the rest of today's photos are on my Lakeshore Images Page for today.

Well, I did go back for the late afternoon sun & it was a definite improvement. I also decided to take a new route to the arch (alright, I admit it I somehow lost the trail). I added some photos from the usual location as well as my "new" one to the LakeshoreImages page.  Here is one of them:

Till Tomorrow...