Cathedral Valley
The weather is cooling a little each day. We woke up this morning to clear, blue skies again, but the temperature in the motorhome was a chilly 45. We turned on the furnace to at least get us to 50 degrees. We finished making lunches, ran our generator for a few minutes, and then drove to Cathedral Valley. Today, we were going to drive all the way to the west end of the valley, climb to the top of the plateau, and walk out to Cathedral Valley Overlook.
The first half of the route was the same as last week to Temple of the Sun. The surprise was the road crew had been by and re-graded the wash crossings and fixed most of the roughest areas. It was a huge improvement. We bypassed Temple of the Sun because we were saving it for sunset. We continued west until we reached the junction with the "road" that goes north all the way to Interstate 70. I didn't care about the road junction, but the volcanic dike that stretched all the way back to the valley wall was very cool. The soil was eroded away from the dike so there were huge, black dikes standing like plates of a dragon's back. In a small valley below the junction, stood a temple very similar to Temple of the Sun.
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We continued up the valley until we reached the Wall of Jericho. We stopped at the east end, so we didn't get the whole wall in. The lighting limited our options to shooting the back side of the wall, it was still very impressive. I want to come back here when we have more time.
We stopped for lunch and walked out to an overlook near the Cathedral Valley Trail. (38, 29' 17.808000" 111, 21' 10.626000". Two temples sat out in the middle of the valley, joined by a low ridge that hasn't been eroded away yet. We shot from the ridge overlooking the valley, but we could have hiked right down to the temples.
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When we reached the west end of the valley, we climbed the VERY rough and rocky road to the top of the plateau. It was much rougher than any other time we had driven this section. We continued out to Cathedral Valley Overlook and photographed the areas we had just explored. The blue skies were great, but we desperately needed clouds in our photographs.
We stopped briefly to shoot a couple of areas in afternoon light that we had seen in the morning. The shot of the volcanic dike near the junction with the road to Interstate 70 was better in the afternoon light, but we missed what could have potentially been a very good shot near the Wall of Jericho. There appeared to be a break in the wall that we could use to reach the other side and shoot the formations lit on-edge. The problem was that we couldn't find a place to pull off. We also didn't have a lot of time for exploring if we were going to shoot Temple of the Sun at sunset. The next time we're here, we will make it a priority to be at the west end of Cathedral Valley late in the day with plenty of time to explore. That may mean camping in the primitive campground at the top of the plateau.
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We got back to Temple of the Sun just in time to get set up and shoot the temple with the swirled rock in the foreground. I had seen a postcard of this rock and the Temple of the Sun in 1992. I thought the location was still a well-kept secret. Wrong! There were footprints all over leading to this rock. It looks like photo tours now include this stop. But today, we had it to ourselves. Well almost... Shortly after we started shooting, a woman from Three Rivers, CA, walked up and began shooting near us. She and her husband are teachers who are taking some time off to travel. She said after 15 years of 80-hour weeks, they needed a break.
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We left as soon as the sun dropped below the ridge and drove the 26 miles back to the highway before it got completely dark. We made it back to the campground at 7:45, which meant we only had 15 minutes to run the generator and re-charge the batteries. We managed to download our images to our computers, but that was the end of electrical use for the day. Hookups at Ruby's Inn are sounding better all the time.
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