Colorado Plateau Archives ~ Rambling ranger

January 13, 2023

Favorite Images of 2022

For this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, we’ve been invited to share our favorite images of 2022. I’ve been sharing this year’s favorite images in my last two posts, so I won’t be revisiting those images here. You can go back and look at those posts if you missed them!

One of my favorite images of 2022 — The God rays are still one of my favorites!

But I would love to share some other favorites. A few of them I’ve published in earlier posts, but most are brand new. It seems my favorite images change weekly! Because of the scarcity of electricity and internet access during my summer months in Alaska, I have still not caught up with my image processing for the past year, and I discover new favorites every day.

Cascade Falls Moran State Park, WA — This is becoming my favorite abstract image for 2022.

There are so many photos I haven’t even really looked at yet, including winter in Arches and most of my fall shots from Alaska and Washington State. It’s like Christmas every day for me as I continually find new favorite images.

I saw some amazing places in 2022. One that has been on my mind continually this week is the California Coast. Most winters I spend either January or February on the California Coast. I’m not there this year, which may be a blessing. My heart goes out to all the folks struggling with too much of a good thing, with the atmospheric river and torrential flooding.

I spent the month of February 2022 housesitting in Pacific Grove on Monterey Bay. I was 4 blocks from the coast and made a point of doing photography nearly every day while I was there. That is also the batch of work I am currently processing, so a lot of my favorite images in this post are from that visit.

Another fantastic roadtrip was driving the Cottonwood Canyon Road in Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument. It was on my bucket list for years, but usually this is a road that requires 4-wheel drive. I called the ranger station to see if it would be safe to drive in just a couple of miles to do some dispersed camping and the ranger told me the road was in great shape and my little Toyota truck would make it end-to-end just fine! Quick change of plans for me, I could not miss that opportunity. The highlight was visiting Grosvenor Arch, and it was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined it would be.

I’ve also spent a lot of time in Olympic National Park this year. I haven’t processed the fall images yet, but I’ve included a spring sunset in this collection.

My last post included a lot of my favorites from the time I spent at home in Alaska, but I am revisiting my favorite flower photo from this summer.

Bog Bean flowers — I love the pattern displayed by the flowers and their shadows in this image.

My best sunset/sunrise of the year was traveling south down Canada’s Cassiar Highway. Every image in the series is so rich and so different. That sunset went through every shade a sunset could possibly have. Intense. I did a series on Instagram last week with a few of these images, 7 Shades of Sunset.

This image looks like I tweaked the color in LightRoom, but honest, it was really that red. I did not saturate the color, I even used Adobe Neutral as my color profile. I published a different swatch from that evening’s palette of hues in last week’s post, ‘cuz this one looked too over the top to me. But now I think it is my favorite.

I traveled the Mt. Baker Highway for the first time this fall. Although the conditions were less than ideal due to wildfire smoke, I was amazed at the astounding views and the easy access to hiking in the alpine. I can only imagine how stunning it must be when there’s no smoke. A new favorite place, I will definitely be checking that road out again!

And of course now, I’m on Orcas Island for the winter, where there are some lovely waterfalls. This image is a favorite.

I look forward to seeing what favorite images 2023 will bring. If you have been following my travels on Facebook, though, it seems that Facebook has not been circulating my posts much lately. I urge you to subscribe to my blog instead, so that you won’t miss a post.

Happy 2023!

North Cascades National Park — I had to include some fall color.

November 30, 2022

My Favorite Places

This week I’d like to share with you all some of my favorite places, ones I will miss this winter as I practice The Middle Way on Orcas Island. This week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge is Home Sweet Home. Tina Schell of Travels and Trifles asks us, ” If a foreigner were to spend a week or a month traveling your home country with you, where would you take them? What sights would you tell them to be sure to see? Where have you found some of your own favorite images? What is it you truly love about where you live, or places you’ve seen in your home country? ”

Southern Colorado — First snow in the Colorado mountains

Well, they would need at LEAST a month for all MY favorite places. Although I grew up in Colorado and now live in Alaska, I feel at home throughout the West. I’ll start with Colorado. I was raised in Colorado, and lived there for many, many years after I went out on my own. It’s probably where I’ll end up when I get too old to live deep in the wilderness in Alaska. My family is there. Colorado is always close to my heart.

Although I’m at home throughout the West, I do have a few favorite places that I try to visit whenever I have the chance. One is the Colorado Plateau. This region covers big chunks of 4 different states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. I can’t narrow my favorite down to just one or two places in this area, it’s all so amazing. My advice to a foreign visitor might be to check out a few places that are not as well-known as iconic parks like Arches and Zion. Although I love them, too, they ARE getting loved to death and it might be good to try to spread that impact out a little. Lesser-known places such as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Petrified Forest National Park contain wonders, too.

Another favorite place is Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. This is the best place I’ve ever been for birds. It is the winter home for vast flocks of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes. Over 340 different species of birds live there. It is an incredible place to observe wildlife.

Sandhill Cranes — Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

I spent 8 winters working as a ranger in Death Valley National Park. It is another desert that has captured my heart. The great thing about Death Valley is that because the altitude on the valley floor is so low (the lowest elevation in North America), the nights are seldom cold, even during the deepest darkest months of winter. Makes for great camping, and the rattlesnakes sleep in the winter! It’s an incredibly diverse park, with elevations ranging from below sea level to over 11,000 feet.

I did a little playing with LightRoom on this image. It was a daytime image and the background of bare dirt desert ground was a bit meh so I darkened it until it resembled the night sky, and tried to give a nighttime feel to the dunes, too. Since Death Valley is famed as a night sky park, and since one of my favorite things to do is to walk through the sand dunes under the full moon, I wanted to capture the feel of that experience in this image.

Mesquite Sand Dunes — I love to hike the sand dunes in the moonlight.

And then there’s the bloom. If there is rain in the desert, and if it is timed right, the wildflowers will rock your world. If it seems like it might be a good year for the flowers, I try to make a circuit that starts near the Mexican border in Anza-Borrego State Park, moving through Joshua Tree and Mojave National Preserve until I end up in Death Valley.

Anza-Borrego State Park — Love those desert wildflowers!

Further west on the California coast you will find another great wildlife phenomenon, the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas near San Simeon. Although you can find a few seals there at any time of year, December through February are the best months. Thousands of seals converge on the beaches, with the big strange-looking bulls battling it out for the right to own a piece of the beach, and all the females on it. The cows are birthing and raising their babies then, too. It’s an extraordinary spot to witness wildlife drama, so close you don’t even need binoculars to see it.

Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery — Sex on the Beach

From the campground at San Simeon I can walk to the beach and see some fantastic bird action on the sea stack that looms just offshore there. It’s an awesome place to catch the sunset.

Farther north along the California coast is Mendocino County. It’s my favorite part of the California Coast. I think the scenery is even more dramatic than Big Sur, and without the crowds. It’s got big trees, too.

Greenwood Beach — The beaches in Mendo are wild and uncrowded.

Speaking of big trees, I’ve really fallen in love with the tallest trees in the world, the redwoods, over the last few years.

Sometimes I go straight up the coast into Oregon. Other times I head for the Siskiyou country near Grants Pass and Williams. The trees there are incredibly graceful and beautiful and it’s my last chance to see wildflowers as I head north.

Pacifica — Oregon has some incredible trees!

But no matter which way I go, I try to hit the coast at Bandon. It is so much fun to shoot the sea stacks there!

The Olympic Peninsula is my next favorite place. The old-growth forests redefine green and the wild beaches are phenomenal.

Olympic National Park — Ferns and feathers

And then there’s Alaska. It’s where my heart is, my community, my job, my life. My first love in Alaska was Denali National Park and I try to go there whenever I get a chance.

But home is McCarthy, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I truly believe it’s the most spectacular place in North America. Case in point – check out my daily commute! And the feature image was taken while I was standing on my front porch! It doesn’t get much better than this.

I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my favorite places. As Jim Morrison of the Doors said, the West is the best!

February 1, 2018

Revisiting the Past at Hovenweep

I’ve been revisiting the past a lot on my winter travels this year. Another place I revisited recently was Hovenweep National Monument.

Hovenweep is more than just a place for me to revisit MY past, it is a place to contemplate deep time and think about our human past. From about 900 to 1300 A.D., there was a settlement in this canyon. By the time it was abandoned, it was a regular town. It is estimated that about 2500 people lived here then.

And what creative people they were! Hovenweep has some of the most interesting Ancestral Puebloan architecture to be found anywhere. There are square towers, round towers, and towers shaped like a D. Buildings were built on top of boulders, and under boulders.

The craftsmanship was superb, even more detailed than the bigger ruins at nearby Mesa Verde.

I found Hovenweep a good place to meditate on change, and on the fact that however much things change, many things remain the same.

Then as now, the surrounding country was rich farmland. Farmers terraced the hillsides and built check dams to retain both water and topsoil. Even the crops haven’t changed much. They grew corn, beans and squash. Nowadays, the area near Hovenweep is known as the pinto bean capital of the U.S.

There was a big drought here, thought by many to be the reason the area was abandoned. As I was passing through, southwest Colorado was experiencing a smaller drought. Some archaeologists believe salinization of the soil may have been one of the problems confronting the Ancestral Puebloans. Salinity of the soil and the water is a challenge encountered by local farmers today, too.

There have been a lot of changes in the 20-odd years since I was here last. The first time I came to Hovenweep it was pretty much the back of beyond. The only way in was a rough dirt road. We weren’t sure if our little two-wheel drive Toyota was up to the journey. It was remote, and there was no Park Service presence at all. I kind of recall a rugged trail leading from one ruin to the next, but it was more a use trail than an official NPS pathway. We were the only people there. It was so quiet, a land abandoned, left to its ghosts.

Now there’s no problem with reaching Hovenweep. The road is paved. There’s a campground and a fancy new Visitor Center. There is a paved walkway to a viewpoint, and a well-maintained trail connects many of the ruins.

Hovenweep National Monument Visitor Center

But I visited in winter, and I still found the solitude I remembered so clearly from the past. I came through on a Tuesday, and found the Visitor Center closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the off season. No one else visited while I was there. I was struck by the silence and the solitude,so similar to the way it was so many years ago. I walked alone with the ghosts, and the memories of other times.

Raven at Tower Point Hovenweep National Monument — Spirit of the Canyon

February 4, 2017February 4, 2017

The Colorado Plateau

I love my home in Alaska, but there ARE a few things I miss about the Lower 48. Of course I miss family and old friends. I miss hummingbirds. I miss thunderstorms. Living in the Rockies, I had them three times a day. In McCarthy, it’s more like three times a summer. But what I miss the most is the Colorado Plateau.

The Colorado Plateau is where the mountains meet the desert. It’s the best of both worlds. When I worked ski resorts, I used to spend a month here every spring. It’s a magic place. There’s a reason why the Colorado Plateau has the highest concentration of parklands in North America. Ten national parks, eighteen national monuments, and all sorts of state parks and national recreation areas, too.

Geologically, the Colorado Plateau is an island of stability surrounded by chaos. A single intact tectonic block, it has survived relatively untouched by the dramatic episodes of mountain building taking place to the east or the stretching and tectonic events of the Basin & Range Province to the west. Erosion is the main force shaping this landscape.

Hiking or floating through the convoluted canyons will reward you with spectacular scenery, slickrock hoodoos, secret slots and hidden arches. You never know what you’ll find around the next bend.

You can travel through deep time, finding remnants of past worlds in the layered rock. Dinosaur tracks and bones. Ancient forests turned to stone. And, oh, the colors!

This is a sacred land. You will find traces of those who lived here before us. Petroglyphs, pictographs, and ruins from Ancient Puebloan cultures abound. Many Native Americans still call this place home.

Walk out into the night. You will experience some of the darkest skies on the continent.

I’m just passing through this time around. But I will be back – to one of my favorite places in the world, the Colorado Plateau.

Tag: Colorado Plateau

Favorite Images of 2022

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My Favorite Places

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Revisiting the Past at Hovenweep

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The Colorado Plateau

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