(Here is the warning, THIS POST is HEAVY in GRAPHICS, and may load slow. Hope you can stick around for the load, if not, I certainly understand and hope you will come back again sometime soon.)
Arches National Park is larger than life, larger than large, huge, gigantic, ok, here is the word, again, "overwhelming". On the first day alone I took about 430 photos. In total, during several trips into the park, I took well over 1000 photos. No, I won't share them all! LOL
Today's offerings are photos I took on the first day in, the first drive into the park, note the word INTO. We were actually driving to the campground at the far end of the park, about 18 miles. We were looking to find MOC friends Robbie and Alice in the campground where they were volunteers. We found them, and spent a couple of hours chatting, sharing, telling lies round the picnic table, and then we were off to do more driving, oohhing, ahhing and even got in a hike. More on that later, for now, here are a few of our first impressions, and believe me, I like the photos I took the next day in the park even better than these! These for the most part were taken from a moving Big Butt. The sun was bright, almost blinding. I felt that most of the photos I took were somewhat washed out, I have tried to correct for that a bit with the photo editing program. A few weeks later, Man and I would play with the settings on the Sony and he showed me some new tricks that will overcome this blinding sun a bit. Always learning, always tweaking, and always in awe - -
Barely have left the Visitors Center, and you see - - massive rocks, and if you look close you can see different strata, textures - -
Even though I really prefer photos without autos and/or people, sometimes that is pretty hard to do, and sometimes the perspective they give is worth having. For example, below, looking at the two cars, you can tell, this structure is pretty tall - -
Below, another example of appreciation of the massive size of these formations, lookie that little car. Sadly this photo is a bit diminished by, mmm, the bugs, on the windshield. SIGHHH. But, still, lookie at that little car!
Below: See that ribbon mid photo?? Yeppers, that is the road, more massive formations standing tall above the desert floor.
I cropped some of the "soooooo blue it is unbelievable" sky out of the photo below. I want to emphasize the rock, red, white, mixed textures and look how it is not straight or level, up, down, you can almost see in your mind's eye how the molten lava rolled, cooling some, filling in low spots. Yea, I was totally taken by these contrasts, how magnificent, almost makes me want to study geology so I will have a better understanding. Almost, instead I will just gawk and ooooo, and ahhhhhh, and stay in a state of bewilderment!
I am running out of descriptive words:
Below: Believe these formations are called "fins".
Below: One of the "windows" to be found at Arches:
After our visit with Robbie and Alice, we continued our discovery of Arches. We took a short hike to Landscape Arch. I'll show you next time, come on back ya all!
* These photos taken on April 27, 2011.
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1 comment:
Absolutely wonderful - bugs and all. Thank you!
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