The Traveling Widower

Tag: hiking

Posts for trips focused on hiking

  • Solo Traveling Again

    A photographer standing on rocky terrain at night, capturing the Milky Way, surrounded by coyotes with glowing eyes and a mountain lion in the background.

    April 20th, 2026

    Monday was my first “free” day since I arrived in Moab last Wednesday. The workshop ended on Sunday evening, and the entire group was heading home in the morning, leaving me with two full days before I left Moab. The Sunday photo session ended relatively early (2:00AM), so I was able to get some sleep, and even made it to the hotel breakfast for a change. Not that the breakfast was worth waking up for – my only complaint with this hotel. I decided to just take it easy in the morning – work on photos, do some laundry, just relax a bit, before heading off to the park. I really wanted to do some hiking and see the park in daylight, but also did not want to kill myself either. I was worn out, and still wanted to do one more Milky Way shoot that night – the weather was supposed to be perfect. And I’m a glutton for punishment. Always have been and probably always will.

    I headed out to the park around noon, and planned to check out the very far end of the main road – I also wanted to visit the location for my solo shoot that evening (Sand Dune Arch) which I had been to only once, in the dark, and had never ventured out of the parking lot. After that, I wanted to see two other arches which required some hiking – Skyline and Landscape.

    The park was relatively empty compared to the weekend – I guess everyone clears out on Sunday, and the crowds grow towards the weekend with traffic from Colorado and Utah. I really enjoyed just driving through the park without rushing, stopping at some pullouts to just enjoy the fantastic scenery.  The Park Avenue trail, which I had ventured out into my first night  in Moab, is beautiful as are the pullouts for the Courthouse Towers. I decided to hold off taking photos until the next day. Never a good idea. Carpe diem, so they say.

    I eventually made it to the Sand Dune Arch parking lot, which was packed. The trail to the arch starts a short distance from the parking lot,  and runs through a narrow slot canyon between two huge fins of rock. Most of the trail is like a nice, sandy beach so of course there were gobs of families, with kids playing in the sand. Fun to watch. The arch is rather small, and easy to miss, except for all the people doing selfies. I made note of where I wanted to set up my tripod that night, near the base of that trail so I could get the view of the sky with the big fin rocks as a foreground. I should have noticed one important feature though, and planned out in more detail the best placement for my tripod – more on that later. Hint – it’s much easier to scope out a site in daylight than in the dark.

    A landscape featuring tall red rock formations against a clear blue sky, with sparse vegetation and sandy ground in the foreground.
    Narrow canyon with tall red rock walls and sandy ground, featuring a large boulder and green vegetation under a clear blue sky.
    Red rock formations under a clear blue sky with sparse vegetation in the foreground.
    A scenic view of red rock formations in a narrow canyon, featuring a natural arch and soft sandy ground under bright blue skies.

    My next stop was the Skyline Arch, also a bit crowded though I think the rocky trail turned some of the less agile visitors away. This was a good confidence builder for me – I was really having balance issues walking around in the dark all week. It was much easier hiking during the day,  not lugging a tripod in one hand, one hiking stick in the other, and trying to stay upright without being able to see much in front of me with just a glow from my red headlamp. I had little if any difficulty negotiating this trail. And the arch was quite nice.

    A natural rock arch formed in red sandstone, surrounded by desert vegetation and clear blue skies.
    Scenic view of red rock formations under a clear blue sky, with desert vegetation in the foreground.

    My final stop for the day was at the end of the road – the Devils Garden, which has the trailhead for the longest arch in the park, Landscape Arch (plus quite a few others). The campground and picnic areas are located there as well. The trail was only 3 miles round trip, but I wore my camera backpack anyway,to hold water and a snack. I looked like a serious hiker. The trail was packed gravel the entire way, easy walking, but also had a couple of relatively steep hills to climb – a good workout and test for my cardiac issues. No problemo! Like most of the older hikers on the trail, I did take some breathers (or pulse reduction breaks) at the top of each hill, but I still made pretty good time getting to the arch. I’d grade that one a ‘Meh’. Not that exciting. But it was a nice hike, a good workout with some great views so I’m glad I did it.

    A desert landscape featuring red rock formations, scattered shrubs, and a fallen log in the foreground under a clear blue sky.
    A person wearing sunglasses and a yellow cap stands in front of reddish rock formations in a desert landscape under a clear blue sky.
    Scenic view of red rock formations under a blue sky with scattered clouds.
    A scenic view of a natural stone arch nestled between rugged red rock formations, with sparse vegetation in the foreground against a clear blue sky.

    Since I was planning another late night outing, I headed back to the hotel to relax after this hike, maybe take a dip in the pool/spa, and have some dinner. The PhotoPills application (I’ll discuss in another post) indicated that the Milky Way would peak over the Sand Dune Arch fins around 3AM, so I intended to take a long nap before leaving for the park again.

    Alone in the dark

    It was a bit strange driving through the park at 11:30PM by myself after four nights of being with a group. It was even stranger finding a place to set up my tripod on my own, and then standing there in a very dark,  isolated spot – there was not much road traffic at all. I could keep my headlight on if I wanted since there was nobody else around, but it was still a little scary. But, the weather was warm, and the sky was perfectly clear so I just focused on setting up my camera, and tried not to think about mountain lions, coyotes, or other wild creature wandering around in the dark. I had a lot of time to kill, so I went back to the car for a while to listen to the radio, and snooze for a bit. I really missed having people to talk to. After an hour, I headed back to my tripod to start taking photos.

    Just about the time the MW had “moved” (the earth is moving not the Milky Way) over the rock formation, a horde of cars pulled into the parking lot, and a large group started working their way towards me – this was another astrophotography workshop, likely the same ones that hogged the site the other night. Fortunately, they just passed me by without saying a word, and set up out of sight further down the trail. Not a very friendly group. The trip lead did make some comment that I was in a lousy spot. 

    Regardless of his comment, I continued shooting for another  hour or so, checking every 5 minutes to view the relationship of the MW to the rock formation – it changes very quickly, and I wanted to make sure I got the core of the Milky Way in a few of the shots. I did notice by accident though, that there was a problem where I had decided to place my tripod. I was pretty much right next to the trail sign. Hard to see that in the dark – that’s where I should have been more careful in my daytime preparation. I checked the next day, and the sign does show up in the foreground as a rectangular outline. Not everyone will notice that, but I’m sure a competition judge will. My bad.

    After a few hours of standing pretty much in the same place, I packed up the tripod and very carefully walked back down the trail to the parking lot – I was nice enough to use the dim red light so as not to impact the other group. I shot a couple of more photos from the parking lot (see below), loaded up the car, and pulled out of the lot with my dims on…it was the right thing to do.

    So that was the official end of my introduction to astrophotography – I have a lot of photos to process now, and that will keep me busy at home for a while. I’ll do a trip summary post once I have a few images worth sharing (I included two below – first attempts).

    Peace.

    Night sky filled with stars and the Milky Way over towering rock formations.
    A night sky filled with stars above jagged rock formations, showcasing the Milky Way galaxy.

  • Sleepless in Moab

    A man resting his head on a laptop at a desk in a hotel room, with a bed in the background and a water bottle on the table.

    April 19th, 2026

    I’m beginning to feel like I’m back working in one of the IT jobs early in my career where I was on-call for software issues 24X7, and something went wrong every night. I remember one time where my wife found me at 2AM, sleeping on the floor with the phone in my hand and someone calling out “Rich, are you still there?” This was the fifth straight night of star photography in the park. On Saturday I was in a daze most of the day, until I had a nice 2 hour nap before we headed out at 11:30PM. That turned into something of a wash – cloud cover, and competition for a prime location, but I did get some nice milky way and start shots. We did not get back to the hotel until 5AM though. I managed to sleep until 10:30 on Sunday, and lazed around a bit. I missed the hotel breakfast, and the one or two restaurants that have all day breakfast were packed. I wound up with a cup of coffee at the hotel, and went out later for a real power lunch – some pretty good gelato with a good cup of coffee. 

    I spent most of Sunday just working through photos, and then had another Lightroom and software presentation from our trip lead. I had a hard time keeping my eyes open (not due to boredom….it was a great session). Since everyone else is checking out and heading home on Monday, our plans for Sunday evening were to have a relatively short Milky Way session at midnight and be back by 3AM. That would be an almost normal evening. But not much. 

    Once again, the clouds did us in. We set up our gear in a parking lot, hoping to get the full Milky Way arch on the horizon. Unfortunately, there were low clouds that just did not want to move, so our smaller group just hung around, talking and trying different techniques until about 2AM. I played with different combinations of shutter speed and ISO – in order to print larger formats, you need to try and keep the star shapes closer to round, and in order to do that, you need a faster shutter speed. But you then have to compensate for the reduction in light with a higher ISO which increases noise. So, I tried various combinations which I can work with later on using Lightroom. I’m just getting up to speed with this application – it’s complicated and powerful, and a lot of editing needs to be done on the low-light photos. Here’s an example of one – the base RAW image just shows a starry sky, with the outline of the rock feature. There are a lot of steps involved to make the foreground visible. The workshop instructor gave us a few demonstrations, and also sent us a “cheat sheet” of the workflow he follows. Absolutely invaluable.

    A starry night sky illuminates a rugged rock formation in the foreground, creating a dramatic contrast against the countless stars above.

    I takes a while for me to create just one of these. so I’ll wait until I get home and can use my big screen iMac for the processing, One funny thing about this image – camping is only allowed in one area in the park. But some guy decided to park his van along the road, right in front of this feature. it showed up perfectly clear when I finished process and immediately cropped it out. We probably kept him up until we finally left.

    Like I said in a previous post, this was a technical workshop – I really did learn a lot about my camera, and how to use it in low-light scenarios. Time well spent.

    It’s always hard when one of these trips comes to a close. You spend a lot of time with new acquaintances, and then everyone goes their separate ways and in most cases, you never hear from them again. I think from the seven trips I’ve been on in the past 2 years, I’ve heard back from maybe one person via comments on my blog. I have picked up a few new subscribers though. I don’t really like to advertise the blog – I only give out the URL if someone asks, so for this trip, I may have one or two new viewers. 

    This trip is not over yet for me – I’ve got two more full days here before I drive back to Salt Lake City, and do not fly back home until Thursday. It will be weird being on my own, especially since I plan to go out one more time in search of the Milky Way tonight. So, more posts and hopefully more photos as well.

    Peace