Westbound and Down!

Fair warning- this post is a nature photo dump; don't expect stores or detailed descriptions. I visited my grandparents in Colorado, and from there we drove out to Utah to see some of the more scenic parts of the desert. There was a lot of interesting views, of which I have a quite a few photos I liked enough to post. Between the number of them I had and the fact that many of you would probably rather see the retail photos separately (don't worry, I've got 3 posts of retail from this trip coming up), I figured I'd stick them in their own post.

Some cliffs we drove by in Western Colorado.

Colorado National Monument State Park, Grand Junction, CO
It's a small park with a confusing name, but it's got some neat views.

Whole lotta desert...

There were some bighorn sheep there, surprisingly close to the road.

Most of the plants here were small but dense. Sized for efficiency, I guess.

These were probably the biggest trees out here.

Looking down the canyon.

This picture should more or less line up with the last one on the left side.

There wasn't any river here, I'm pretty sure this canyon was carved by the wind.

Interesting rock formations.

One last look down this canyon.

Now we're in Utah, making it my 21st state photographed on here! This was taken from the car on a highway following the Colorado River.

Another picture along the same road.

Cliché desert picture.

Another one from the car.

Arches National Park, Moab, UT
I was playing around with my camera's settings and found a filter that looked good with the rocks.

Here's the most famous of the park's namesake arches. It got featured on Utah's National Park quarter (is it just me or are the park quarters much harder to find than the regular state quarters?).

The park had a lot of nice non-arch views too. It was a nice place to walk around. We got lucky with the weather and had some cloud cover, the summer sun out here is brutal.

Wood doesn't really rot out in the desert, thanks to the lack of water. Trees also really don't grow much either. This one's gotta be over a hundred years old, and has probably been dead almost just as long.

Two of the park's other arches.

Say, is that a Diglett?

Canyonlands National Park, Moab, UT
Moab is the only city I know with two National Parks. This one was pretty scenic too, but not as much as Arches was. I took more pictures here since the coloring of the rocks made it a fun place to play around with my camera filters.

This could totally be a John Wayne movie backdrop.

The park had railings along the edge of the Cliffs. Unlike with Chester, I did not risk my life to get you these pictures.

Professional photographers like to do a lot of black-and-white. PlazaACME and his point-and-shoot camera don't. I took one, decided that was enough, then moved back to the color filters.

I forget what this filter was supposed to be, but I like how it turned the haze in the background purple. Hey wasn't that a Jimi Hendrix song?

The filter I kept coming back to was one that made the colors much more vibrant. I really liked how it made the red rocks pop.

I also liked how it made the shrubs look.

I know it made the photos look super fake, but I really liked it.

I think the filter also upped the contrast a little bit. That's a very toned cloud.

It looks less like a John Wayne backdrop with the filter and more like a Road Runner cartoon. Not that that's a bad thing.

Channeling my inner Georgia O'Keefe here.

I liked the cloud's shadow here. See you next time, when we'll be back to my usual type of content.

I'm a little conflicted as to what song I should pick today, there's three I'm thinking of. I'll stick the other two in my next posts from this trip, and put the one I referenced in the title here.