Travel – Page 39 – On the road with Jim

Embarrassment Pie 2018 Utah Photo Shoot

On the road, you’re forced to try new restaurants. Some of them are good, a few are poor, but most of them are blah. Most restaurant owners don’t have an interest in food and they have little imagination. They are just trying to make a buck and so the profit and loss statement dictates the menu. I mean, my mom used to put more lunch meat on our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when she packed our school lunches than they serve at roadside dives. That’s why, when I find a place that has great food, I like to tell you about it.

Happy Couple – On the grounds of the Burr Trail Grill are a pair of gas pumps as yard-art. They’re of little use for anything else now because the largest price is 99 cents.

There are eight little communities along Utah’s State Route 12. Most of them barely have a post office much less a coffee shop. Boulder is one of those small towns. It’s wedged between the—terrifying to drive over—petrified sand dunes and Boulder Mountain. If you’re not going to see the ruins at the Anasazi State Park or to drive the Burr Trail, there’s no good reason to visit Boulder … other than they—inexplicably—have two outstanding restaurants, the Hell’s Backbone Grill and—our favorite—the Burr Trail Grill. Truthfully, we don’t know about Hell’s Backbone because we stopped at Burr Trail first and keep returning each time we pass this way.

Burr Trail Grill – Located at the intersection of SR 12 and Burr Trail the grill is only open during the season but the food is good.

The grill is on SR 12, right at the Burr Trail—an interesting side trip that we’ll talk about another time. It’s a small wooden shack-like building that has more seating outside than in, which is good because the parking lot is usually full at lunch. It is only open during the summer—May to October—after which, the staff return to their day jobs at the ski resorts near Salt Lake City. The menu features burgers and sandwiches which doesn’t sound exotic, but I’ve had the Thai Burger and their Ruben. Each of my choices favorably impressed me. The food at the Burr Grill is good, but we dream of their pies.

Mixed-Berry-Ginger Pie – Warm from the oven with a scoop of home-made ice cream and fresh whipped cream is guaranteed to make you forget about decorum.

This pie will embarrass you. It has the kind of crust that explodes all over the table when you put a fork to it, just like Aunt Clara made. After your first taste, you scoop up the table-crumbs and eat them. Pies are baked fresh each day and served with home-made vanilla ice cream and fresh whipped cream. There’s a changing variety each day. Anne loved the chocolate-bourbon and she had to settle for peach on our second visit. When you order a slice, it takes a minute because they warm it in the oven. I ordered a slice of cherry-cayenne, which sounds weird, but was tangy and not hot—like a sour cherry. On our second visit, I went for the mixed-berry-ginger and that made my taste buds explode. It was the taste of berry tartness at the beginning followed by a bright splash of ginger. As you dig in, the warm pie melts the ice cream resulting in a pool of fruit-cream on the saucer. As I devoured mine, I looked across the table and saw Anne’s eyes peering over her plate while she licked it. “What!” was all she had to say for herself—queen indeed. I told you it was embarrassing pie.

When you come to explore SR 12, be sure to plan a stop in Boulder for at least a slice of pie. You may come away embarrassed, but you’ll be better off for it—recommended.

Until next time — jw

Bryce Canyon 2018 Utah Photo Shoot

Thor's Hammer And Sunset Point — Thor’s Hammer And Sunset Point – As the Navajo Trail descends, it passes by Thor’s Hammer, Bryce Canyon’s most iconic hoodoo.

Of all the sights to see along Utah’s State Route 12, Bryce Canyon is the crown jewel. All of the other stops along the way are sideshows. The park draws people worldwide and they have to use SR 12 to get to it. I, however, am a weirdo that stops at Bryce because it’s part of the highway. Interestingly, Route 12 cuts through Bryce’s north-east corner, so you get a taste of the Bryce Canyon without leaving your car.

We’ve been to Bryce a handful of times and it’s one of our favorite national parks. With elevations exceeding 9,000 ft, it’s always cooler than home. It has alpine meadows and forests of spruce, fir, and aspen, which are a definite change from cacti. There are great views from the overlooks dotting its 38-mile road and you get an understanding of the Escalante Grand Staircase when you look down from the top. Finally, there’s wildlife—if you don’t see at least one deer while in the park, well … you’re just asleep at the wheel.

Leaning Tree – At the canyon’s bottom are amazingly tall fir trees growing between formations like they were stretching to reach the light.

Like most visitors, Anne and I stopped at the overlooks on our previous visits, but I wanted to do something different this time. While we were in the visitor’s center, I asked the ranger about the trails and she recommended the Navajo Trail to get the photographs that I was looking for. It’s a loop trail that’s less than a mile and a half long. On their chart, it was a moderate hike because of its 500 ft elevation change. I thought to myself, “Piece of cake, sign me up.”

Before tackling the Navajo, Anne and I drove to the road’s end—Rainbow Point. That’s the park’s highest elevation, and in addition to the great view, there’s a flat trail—for Bryce Canyon—that loops through a grove of bristlecone pines. After completing the loop, we concluded that the bristlecone grove at Cedar Breaks was healthier, larger, and a better experience if you like walking among these ancient trees.

Wall Street – The Navajo Trail passes through a section called Wall Street where you’re dwarfed by the cliffs like a ‘Lord of the Rings’ setting.

As we drove back to Sunset Point where the Navajo Trail is, Anne called our insurance agent and demanded that he increase my life insurance policy—she of so little faith. When we arrived, we couldn’t find a parking space and I questioned if anyone was still at home in Europe. All of the spaces were full and a queue of three cars waited for each potential empty spot. We decided that I should go and Anne would circle the parking lot—like you do at the airport—until she found an open parking spot. With a kiss for good luck, I grabbed my camera and backpack—with water—which burst open and emptied before I made it to the rim—and set off on my great adventure.

Let me describe the Navajo Trail. On the map, it’s a 1.3-mile loop with a 500 ft elevation change. I hiked down 500 ft on switchbacks for three-quarters of a mile. At the bottom was a log-bench that felt good to sit on. Then I walked around a column and began the trek up another set of switchbacks climbing 2,000 ft in under three miles. If I went in the other direction, the numbers would have been the same. It was one of the most exhilarating things I have done in my life. I didn’t understand Bryce Canyon until it swallowed me.

Navajo Emerging – As the trail begins to emerge, it feels like breaking the water surface after a dive.

I made my journey in 1½ hours, but I was taking photos as I plodded along the trail. I resented the kids and a young man who ran up the hill wearing flip-flops. George Bernard Shaw was right when he observed, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I’m glad that I made the effort because I got a different perspective of Bryce Canyon in a mental sense and in my work, which I hope you enjoy viewing.

Until next time — jw

Hoodoo Windows Picture of the Week

I photographed the second featured image in our Utah series on the west rim of the Paunsaugunt Plateau north of Utah SR 12. This is the plateau where Bryce Canyon is located, but this is on the opposite side. Before entering Red Canyon, there’s a dirt road that heads north to Losee Canyon (not misspelled) and the trailhead located there. In the parking lot, with a little searching, you’ll see a sign for the Arch Trail—it’s a short loop that climbs up and around the plateau’s edge. Like most trails in Utah, the Arch Trail goes up or comes down. It’s anything but level.

The Arch Trail wanders among interesting rock formations including a couple sets of hoodoos—like the ones in this week’s photo. If you’re lucky enough to wander off the trail at the right spot, you’ll find the arch that the trail is named for. At the summit, you’ll enjoy a great view of the Panguitch Valley and the Markagunt Plateau in the west. It’s not a well-maintained trail like you find in national parks, but it’s easy to follow once you’ve found it, and rangers built several flights of stairs in the difficult spots.

I chose this image because hoodoos always seem distant things. In this case, the trail goes right up to them. You can touch them, pose your kids in them, walk through them, and unfortunately, you can deface them with “Kilroy was here – 2018” as some people have. In this shot named Hoodoo Windows, I tried to show a feeling of intimacy with the structures. I was lucky that the light was good when I arrived at the scene—it was dinner time and the sun was on its way down.

You can see a larger version of Hoodoo Windows on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we present another image from a different Utah site.

Until next time — jw

Making Lemonade 2018 Utah Photo Shoot

As teenagers growing up in Los Angeles, we were ambivalent about the Santa Ana Winds. They would clear the air in the LA Basin, pushing it offshore where it was somebody else’s problem, and for a week or two, you could see where you lived and enjoy the beautiful mountains surrounding us. But the winds also dried out the scrub. Dry enough, a careless motorist could fire by flipping a cigarette out the window. Fires are a way of life in Southern California. They’re annual, but you don’t get used to it.

As a kid, I saw how smoke can choke the air, but I also saw a phenomenon helpful to photographers, although that didn’t sink in until I was older. When heavy smoke fills the air, it filters the sun—like sunglasses. During sunsets, the sun is an orange globe that you can look directly at. The smoky atmosphere causes beautiful orange sunsets. I don’t know if you’d call that a benefit, but they’re unusual.

After Monday’s shooting, I was processing some photos for yesterday’s blog when I glanced at the setting sun through Ritz’s window and saw an orange sun. Yesterday, as I wrote, I thought about trying to capture a sunset from my teenage memories. I decided to give it a go, and at 7:45, I drove north on US 89, looking for a suitable foreground for my sunset experiment. I settled on a spot where the sun would go down behind a lovely mountain—Sandy Peak. As a bonus, there was a vast field sprinkler spraying streams of water that would glow with the backlighting. I exited the truck and sat by the roadside, camera in hand, and waited.

The smoke in the air must have dissipated because as the sun got lower, it didn’t get duller, although it still had a tint of orange. I knew I would need to wait for the sun to kiss the mountain for the shot to work. That meant shooting when the sun was most colored anyway. Then, at 8:00, four children burst out of the house to my left. One got on a quad and started driving around while three girls—judging from the long dresses they wore—began running toward the sprinkler. When they got there, they turned off my sprinklers. I’m talking about one of those massive machines you see in fields moving on wheels in a circle. I’d be afraid to touch it, and these children turned it off like the hose in the front yard.

I thought about leaving, but the sun was inches away by then, and the girls hung around the fixture, so I adjusted the camera to bring up the foreground and started shooting until the sun slipped halfway behind the mountain.

Sandy Mountain Sunset- This is my failed attempt to capture an orange sunset, but the story is nice anyway.

Here is my last and best shot. The smoke wasn’t thick enough, the water wasn’t spraying, and I have live humans in my photograph, but I thought I’d share my evening with you—at no extra charge. Can you find the girls? They’re there, I can assure you. Now, I can go back to shooting inanimate objects.

Until next time — jw

Cedar Breaks National Monument Utah Photo Shoot

Cedar Breaks Amphitheater - Cedar Breaks is a five-mile amphitheater that looks like someone took an ice cream scoop to it and left behind the candy toppings. The distant peak is Brian Head at over 11,000', where the ski resort is located. — Cedar Breaks Amphitheater – Cedar Breaks is a five-mile amphitheater that looks like someone took an ice cream scoop to it and left the candy toppings. The distant peak is Brian Head at over 11,000′, where the ski resort is located.

Yesterday could have been the perfect day to visit Cedar Breaks, the mini version of Bryce Canyon high on the eastern edge of the Markagunt Plateau in southern Utah. The muggy weather that had hung around all weekend moved out and it was dry and sunny with a light breeze from the west. As we entered the park the car’s temperature indicator said it was 68° outside. Conditions couldn’t have been better for an afternoon of hiking and picture-taking.

It wasn’t this nice the first time we visited Cedar Breaks. That was Memorial Day weekend in 2004. The Queen and I decided to get out-of-town to escape the 115° weekend. We had tossed the camping gear into the truck and left before dawn dressed in shorts and tee shirts. We drove straight through only stopping at the Flagstaff Mickey D’s for an egg-a-muffin. That truck didn’t have an outside temperature gauge and it barely made it up the 12% grade. We still had the air-conditioning on when we stopped in the parking lot. It was a sunny afternoon, but when we opened the doors, a blast of Arctic air greeted us and chilled us to our bones. We scrambled to find our jackets. At 10,300 feet, Cedar Breaks can be hostile.

Tee shirts and shorts were the perfect uniforms yesterday. That wasn’t a problem. The issue that I had was in the air. Up here, it’s normally clear and pristine, protected by its remoteness, but because somebody’s trying to burn down California, the air was filled with smoke that traveled across Nevada. That smoke-filled air is not conducive for taking detailed landscape panoramas. I had to change my mindset and look for more intimate images.

From the visitor’s center, there’s a short one-mile hike to Spectra Point—an overlook that has a grove of large Bristlecone Pine trees. I’ve always admired these Methuselah trees for how they live for thousands of years in places where nothing else will grow. I had heard about them on my last trip, but it was spring thaw with snow covering parts of the trail and the rest being a muddy bog. That wasn’t an excuse today, so I put on my new camera backpack and balanced the tripod on my shoulder and set off to conquer nature.

Fins, hoodoos, and arches. — Fins, hoodoos, and arches – As the soft sandstone erodes it breaks down into long structures called fins. As the fins erode they leave individual spires called hoodoos. During that process, the bottom of the fin may fail and collapse leaving a window or arch. There are examples of all three in this photo. Can you spot the arch?

The trail actually leads to two overlooks, the second one being Ramparts. As I started skipping along I considered going the extra mile—as they say. It looked doable on the map because the parking lot is 10,300′ and Spectra point is 10,285′. A mere 15-foot drop—posh, child’s work. Ramparts, however, is 9,985′. I decided to see how I felt when I reached Spectra Point—after all, I have ridden a bike five miles every morning, so I’m buff … Right?

My skipping immediately ceased when I turned a corner and reached the base of a 300′ hill that’s not on the map. You can guess what my decision was already. I can walk three miles in an hour at home, but in the thin air, my trip took 45 minutes. I spent an hour shooting trees and views along the rim before heading back to Archie—our truck, where Anne was reading a book. You’d think she’d have carried the camera bag or a picnic basket or something. When I opened the back door in my sweat-soaked shirt and loaded the equipment while panting, all I got was, “How was your little hike dear?”

We spent today recuperating—she broke a nail—and I processed a couple of photos to show you. At dinner, we’ll decide where next to explore. We’ve concluded that the smoke has permeated Utah and we’ll just have to work around it, but we’re going to have fun even if it kills us.

Until next time — jw