Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Posted on February 19, 2021, 3:00 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Day 13 Grand Canyon National Park sees crowds of 5 million visitors per year, but its unknown neighbor, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, is a place of solitude. Protecting the entire Grand Canyon watershed, the monument extends from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to forested mountains 8,000 feet high. In the southeast section of […]
Posted on February 12, 2021, 2:54 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Day 12 To rest my legs from hiking about 18 miles the day before, my plan was to spend a lot of time behind the wheel. I would circle Vermilion Cliffs National Monument (136 miles) and also reach two faraway Grand Canyon points, one at its very east at river level, the other at the […]
Posted on February 5, 2021, 8:43 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Day 11 Zion National Park’s Virgin River Narrows is arguably the most famous canyon hike in the world. Being that Zion National Park is the 7th most crowded national park (per this way of evaluating the “crowd factor”), the Virgin Narrows can feel downright crowded (Five ways to photograph the Zion Narrows without people). The […]
Posted on January 21, 2021, 9:58 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Days 9,10 Just like in Treasured Lands, for my new national monuments book one of my goals was to cover each of the monument’s corners, providing photographs and information about each of its significant areas. I had visited Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument multiple times before, but the monument is so vast that there were […]
Posted on January 15, 2021, 12:47 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Days 7,8,9 Since 2018, each autumn found myself in Bears Ears National Monument. 2020 was no exception. This time, I had planned to start at Valley of the Gods, where I ended my previous visit. On that evening of November 2019, after a promising afternoon, clouds had blocked the western horizon at sunset time. About […]
Posted on January 7, 2021, 6:45 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Days 5,6,7 Although I could always look for more, I needed just one image of Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument with autumn foliage, and being reasonably confident with the one I made, I could now turn to locations that had eluded me during my previous trip. Instead of roadside photography, they would require short […]
Posted on December 25, 2020, 8:54 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
To those who celebrate the occasion, Merry Christmas! Day 5 After driving 350 miles straight from Las Cruces save for a gas stop, I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing bright yellow spots dotting the Rio Grande River gorge. Shortly past the village of Pilar, NM-570 follows the river banks inside the gorge as […]
Posted on December 10, 2020, 10:58 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Day 3 After arriving at the trailhead for Waterman Peak in Ironwood Forest National Monument at 12:30 am, I walked around to locate the trail. Having driven straight from the previous sunset location, I had re-arrange the gear in my new rental car to make room for sleeping before setting up the alarm clock for […]
Posted on December 3, 2020, 6:47 pm, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Day 2 In Mojave Trails National Monument, Bigelow Cholla Garden Wilderness, 18 miles west of Needles, protects California’s densest population of the fluffy cactus. The Wilderness area is bounded by I-40 on the north and power utility roads on the southwest and southeast. On my first visit, I tried to drive the later roads in […]
Posted on November 19, 2020, 11:49 am, by QT Luong, under
Locations.
Day 1 At Bonanza Springs, the only water source of its size in more than 1,000 square miles of most arid desert, willows and cottonwoods line up a small canyon for half a mile. The watering hole sustains rare Mojave Desert wildlife including tortoises and bighorn sheep. It is a great place to camp and […]
