Last Day in Capitol Reef
Today was our last day in Capitol Reef. We initially thought about driving to Little Egypt for the day, but it's nearly 70 miles each way. We spent nearly all day yesterday driving, so we decided to spend today getting some final shots we wanted around the park and then go out tonight.
I spent the morning getting caught up on the trip journals, and Carol enjoyed reading her book. After our delicious hot dog lunch, we returned to the petroglyph panels to see if the afternoon light would make the figures any more distinct. The petroglyphs are carved into light-colored sandstone along the base of the canyon walls. In areas without desert varnish, it's very difficult to photograph the petroglyphs. The afternoon light and a polarizing filter produced better images than our first attempt on this trip, but some were still very subtle.
The petroglyphs include many of the "traditional" figures of bighorn sheep, horses, dogs, and deer, but these artists also seemed to have a sense of humor. How else can you explain a bighorn sheep walking on its hind legs with a cane or the alien-like creature with tentacles coming out of its head? And then there's the rabbit in the hat and the one-eyed creature with antennae. The hiking bighorn sheep is especially faint, but it's similarity to the flute-playing bighorn sheep at Sand Island was too good to pass up.
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Carol had spotted a wagon in front of some colorful cottonwoods, so she wanted to go back and shoot it in the late afternoon light. I was less interested in the old farm wagon, but I liked the light on the Virgin River and The Castle with the Moenkopi Formation in the foreground. And for the first time over the past two weeks, there were clouds over the canyon. Because of the cloudless, blue skies, we've struggled to get any good images from Capitol Reef on this trip. I'm hopeful that I got some better images today.
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We returned to camp to camp to eat dinner, run the generator, and change clothes before shooting the stars over Chimney Rock. We soon discovered we were very out of practice at shooting at night. Chimney Rock wasn't an ideal subject because the bottom 2/3 blended into the canyon walls behind it, but we thought it would still be good practice. We brought our spotlight and tried to light Chimney Rock while we had the shutters open. That seemed simple enough except that there was so much dust in the air that the images looked like ghosts has flitted across the frame. It's going to take a lot more practice before we get anything good.
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