On my return trip from the Grand Canyon North Rim, my first overnight stay was near Gallup, New Mexico at Red Rocks Park. There were large red rock formations around the park and I thought this would be a good place to check out. It was not a bad place to stay for one night, but much less interesting than I had anticipated. At least the weather was mild, due to overcast and rain during the day, just before I arrived at the park, then a booming thunderstorm at night.
My second overnight was at Texas’s Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo. I had been through the park many years ago, but never spent much time here. My campsite was deep into the canyon. Even though it was late July, the weather was only mildly hot in the day and cooled down nicely at night.
After settling in, I walked around the area to scout potential locations for sunset and possibly sunrise photography. All of the scouting images in this post were made with my iPhone.
As in most western US deserts or arid places, cacti abound and one needs to watch where one steps.
Visitors to this area have a penchant for carving into the rocks, which I assume must not be very hard rocks. I found this image of a dinosaur in a narrow space between large boulders.
Many of the boulders near the campsite had graffiti, initials, names and/or other scratched in symbols.
I captured images, testing compositions and to use as reminders, at locations that I thought might be good to return to with my DSLR at sunset.
I posted this panoramic image to Flickr, not because I thought it was a great image, but to share with others that may want to know what the area looks like and because I intended to use it in my blog and wanted to have a link to a larger image. Much to my surprise, this image was chosen for Flickr’s Explore page and is now my most viewed and faved image on Flickr. Maybe I’m just physically abusing myself carrying around that heavy DSLR camera and other gear, when a simple iPhone image garners this much attention.
Apparently, lots of people have scrambled up the steep slope to the top of this hill, since the boulders there all had some initials, names and dates carved into them.
Stay tuned for the sunset shoot here,
Ken