We had a very simple goal for today. We were going to hike out and photograph the 4 arches on the eastern end of the park. I had searched for Little Mosquito Arch earlier in the week, but found it just as the light dropped behind the ridge. Today, we would get an earlier start and try to find all 4 of the main arches.
One of the good parts of that plan was that we could sleep in this morning. We had a leisurely omelet breakfast and then drove over to the Visitor Center to check out the exhibits. For a small state park, the Visitor Center was pretty impressive.
Our trip to the Visitor Center forewarned us that it was going to be very warm today. It has been getting progressively hotter each day this week. We had originally planned to start our 3-mile tour of the four arches at 1:00, but the heat convinced us to delay our starting time to 3:00. With sunset at 5:55, we thought we could still find all four arches--if we didn't waste too much time searching for them.
El Portal Arch
was the first on our list.
Using the GPS and an image I snagged from GoogleEarth saved to my iTouch, we had no problem finding "El Portal Arch." In fact, we discovered
"El Portal Arch" was really a general term for the MANY arches found along the top of the ridge on the eastern border of the park. As we approached
the ridge, we could see one large vertical arch and a smaller circular arch clearly visible. When we arrived at the foot of the main arch,
we began noticing arches and small windows all over the area. None of them exactly matched the image we had for Portal Arch, so we climbed to the top
of the ridge to look through the arch from the opposite side. That opened up a whole new world to explore. There were caves, arches, arches in arches, windows,
sandstone concretions, and strange textures and shapes everywhere. Carol started on the east side of the ridge, and I started on the west side of the ridge.
We eventually traded sides as we saw new things to photograph at every turn. Every angle opened up new opportunities. We finished up the area by shooting
in "Scrunch Cave 1" and "Scrunch Cave 2," as Carol called them. We each took our turn at cramming ourselves as far back into
each cave as we could crawl. The image below shows Carol standing outside Scrunch 2 Cave. The cave is that little hole to Carol's right just at the edge
of the image. Just as the sun was painting the rocks with its best rendition of sunset light, we shot out of the openings to the surrounding features.
We got a unique view of the rock formations, but we were covered with fine dust and clay when we emerged from the caves. Our clothes went straight
to the dirty clothes bag when we returned to camp.
|
|
|
| How Many Arches Can You Count? | El Portal Arch | |
|
|
|
| Mud Arch | Carol Outside of Scrunch 2 Cave | |
|
|
|
| Scrunch 1 Cave | Scrunch 2 Cave |
By the time we finished shooting from Scrunch Cave 2, the sun was dropping down behind the ridge, and our plan for shooting all 4 arches was long gone. We spent our entire time shooting in the El Portal Arch ridge. On our way back to the Explorer, we could see Little Mosquito Arch, but it was already in shadows. For the second time in 3 days, I had missed shooting Little Mosquito in Golden Hour light. We've revised our schedule to shoot Fire Wave again tomorrow afternoon and then return to Little Mosquito on Thursday afternoon. Since the warming trend is supposed to continue, we'll probably have to wait to shoot the other two arches in the area (Pretzel Arch and At Least 5-hole Arch) on Friday or Saturday. It looks like we'll stay at Valley of Fire the two full weeks as we continue to find new areas to photograph and as we wait for fall color in Zion. We are definitely enjoying not having to follow any set schedule.
Previous Day
Return to Trip Page