The Traveling Widower

Tag: national-parks

Moab & Arches National Park – First Impressions

April 16th, 2026

This has been a very different kind of trip for me so far – I usually have enough free time to work on blog posts, but I have been either driving, hiking, or doing something with cameras pretty much the entire time I’ve been here. And finding time to sleep has been a problem as well. So, here is an update on this trip before my afternoon nap, and heading out for about a 12 hours photo shoot this evening…..in the freezing cold.

My flight out to Salt Lake City was uneventful – it’s only a 2 hour flight, and we got in early. For the first time in a very long time, I even arrived at the airport slightly less than 2 hours from departure. I’m living on the edge these days..

This is the first time I’ve flown into Salt Lake City since, oh, maybe 1980 when I had a class in some long forgotten technology. I’ll bet the airport did not have jetways back then, and you boarded/departed the plane on stairs. Anyway, the airport is enormous now, and finding the rental car counters was a challenge. I eventually found Budget, got a little Chevy SUV-like thing, and headed south-east to Moab. What a beautiful drive! Once you get out of the main highway (US 15) past Provo, the landscape is incredible. It was a very pleasant drive on a mostly four-lane highway with lots of rest stops, but it was very nice to finally motor into Moab around 5 o’clock.

As I mentioned in the last post, I have only been to Moab once before, in my undergraduate geology field camp back in 1972. Moab back then was a mining town – there was a huge uranium mine and processing plant, which closed in 1984, leaving a lot of tailings and waste to clean up. Back then, there was not much of a reason for tourists to flock here, so the town was pretty small. Now the main street is filled with brew pubs (yes, in Utah), restaurants, jeep tour offices and of course the usual tourist shops selling t-shirt/western type stuff. And a lot of hotels. And at least four ice cream and/or gelato shops. I kind of like the place – the town has nice vibes, sort of a larger version of Kanab Ut. And it is a 10 minute drive to the park entrance.

After settling into a very nice room and grabbing some dinner at a nearby restaurant, I decided to take advantage of what was forecast to be a cloudless, but a bit windy, night. I might as well give it a try on my own. I did a Google search (of course) on the best location in the park for night photography, and chose one that sounded interesting (Balanced Rock), which was not too deep a drive into the park since I was pretty tired from the flight and drive. I loaded my gear and warm clothing into my sporty little Chevy, and headed off to the park a bit before sunset.

There were no lines getting into the park – it is open 24X7 but the entry booths are not staffed at night. Once you get past the entry point, the drive was one big “OMG” for me. The landscape is incredible – enormous walls of red sandstone, huge fins and rock towers. Absolutely spectacular. Very much different than Zion or Bryce. It was about a ten minute drive to the parking lot for the Balanced Rock – I pulled in, and did a quick walk-around to figure out where to set up once it got dark. And took a few pictures while it was light of course.

There were a few other cars in the lot, also waiting for nightfall, and a steady stream of tourists stopping for selfies. Once the sun went down, few if any cars stopped by, but there was a steady stream of traffic heading towards the park exit, even at 10PM, there were still cars driving by. This was a problem for night photography – with a 20 second shutter speed, a passing car can ruin a shot. Or in some cases as I discovered, it actually helps to have the rocks “light painted”.

The other problem I had was with groups wandering around in the dark – it was incredibly dark so that you could not even see a foot in front of you. Every now and then, I would hear voices of people coming down the path and had to warn them before they walked into my tripod. There were also groups with flashlights, randomly pointing at the rock formations. Crazy town.

Eventually, I had my fill of this location, and decided to head back towards town. I made one more stop at another location requiring a short walk down a gravel path, and after that, headed back to the hotel. I was way too tired to look at any of the results, and just collapsed in bed.

The next morning, I downloaded the photos on the SSD card to my laptop, and started doing some editing using Adobe Lightroom CC – I have been learning how to use this software, (Youtube videos), but I’m still a novice. Mostly what I did was changes to exposure, clarity, shadows – all basic editing, which is allowed in competition. I was surprisingly pleased at how some of the shots came out, given my lack of experience with astrophotography – I’ve still got a lot to learn about camera settings and processing with Lightroom. That’s why I’m taking this course.

And you can get a little crazy with the editing and get some very unnatural colors.

Thursday was another free day – the course officially started at 5:00PM when the group first met with the trip lead. Since I had most of the day free, I decided to check out the park in the daylight. Unfortunately, the weather was uncooperative for photography – heavy cloud cover and a lot of wind. But, I wanted to check out some of the famous arches and do a little hiking. The park was crowded, but not too bad – only a 15 minute wait to get through the entrance.

First on my list was the best known feature of the park, the Delicate Arch. There are two trails to see this feature – one requires 3 miles of hiking on steep, rocky terrain, which gets you right up to the arch. The other is a mile hike up a steep, rocky trail which gets you to viewing area where you can see the hordes of people in the distance who hiked up the more difficult trail. I opted for the long range view, and I’m glad I did.

Next on my list were the Windows, two large arches close to another well known feature, the Double Arch. The lighting was extremely flat by then, but I hiked up some of the trials for the fun of it – I’ve got a few more free days, so I’ll hopefully get a chance to photograph these in better conditions.

I met up with the rest of the group later that afternoon – a good mix of folks, mostly from the Denver area, but a few from other parts of the country. There was also a mix of experience with the group – some had been on this same trip before with the same lead, and most everyone had prior experience with astrophotography. I also had a bad case of gear envy – many of had higher end cameras and lenses, a few with the top end Sony cameras. It also became apparent on how this was different from all my other trips – this was all about the process and technical details of astrophotography. The trip lead is an expert in this field, and the focus of the course is all about the camera gear and understanding the fine details of tuning it for capturing low light from the stars. What was missing from the initial workshop session and first outing, was any discussion of the park and region, unlike Road Scholars and National Geographic trips. No culture, no geology, no flora or fauna – just cameras and how to shoot the stars. I doubt if I will ever focus much on star photography after this trip – this was just one of those topics I’m interested in enough to take a course like this, and I will be doing more night photography for the Northern Light trip. But I cannot see myself investing in the specialized gear and software for stacking photos of the Milk Way or creating those cool spiral shots of star tracking. But that could change I guess.

Our first workshop session was enlightening though – I learned a lot about the fancy camera I have, and the basics of star photography. We then headed out for our first session at 11PM – the weather was not exactly conducive for photography – cloud cover, cold, very windy, but the lead wanted to at least show us how to “tune” the camera settings, and that needed to be done out in the wild. The bare basics were how to set your focus correctly – that’s not as easy as it sounds. I had fortunately lucked out in getting the settings right on my own, but now understood more on how to balance between the aperture, shutter speed and ISO to get the sharpest photos. And for focusing the camera….well, you don’t just set your focus to infinity. You’ll wind up getting blurry stars. Why? The stars are beyond infinity! You actually just have to pick a star, not a planet, and manually focus on it until it is small and clear, and then tape the focus ring on the lens. You’re all set at that point.

Enough technical details for now. We headed out in five cars – I decided to drive on my own in case I was too tired and wanted to head back early. It really did not matter – it was too windy and cold to do anything other than set the focus under the trip leads supervision, and then we headed back to the hotel. The clouds were rolling in again anyway, so there was no sense in staying any later. The spot we wound up in for our calibration exercise was an issue for me – we had to hike down a rocky trail in the dark – the trail would not have been a problem for me in the daylight, with my hiking stick, but a bit frightening with only my headlamp to light the path. I wound up using my tripod as a hiking stick on the way back. No damage done, and I did get to sleep by 1:30AM.

I did not get much in the way of photos from this second day (first of the trip) – I’ve included a few of the Windows arches (more stairs to climb!), and some other odds and ends including Delicate Arch, taken from a distance. This evening (Friday) we are heading out for sunset, and then multiple stops for Milky Way photography, and should be back by dawn. The skies will be clear, but the temperatures will be down in the teens. I did not pack for winter, and had to buy some thermal underwear. I’ll be spending a lot of time in the car with the heater on.

One last strange photo – never seen an outhouse with one of these before.

On that note….Peace.

April 17, 2026
A Trip To Nowhere, And A Really Big Rock

All roads lead to nowhere

I had planned this adventure well before my recent trip to Colorado – Mitchell Caverns was the next to last on my Cave-A-Week tour, and while I was in the vicinity of Sequoia National Park, I figured I could cross Moro Rock off my bucket list, another hike with a bunch of steps. Is this becoming yet another obsession? Moi? Obsessive? Never. I guess I’ll never learn.

Fortunately, neither of these little adventures were anywhere near as physically destructive or death defying as the Manitou Incline. But I have to wonder why I decided to do a very long car trip so soon after returning from Colorado (one week). Mitchell Cavern is out in the middle of the Mojave Desert (“The Middle of Nowhere” defined), a 4 hour drive from Bakersfield, which is a 4.5 hour drive from home. There are places to stay in Barstow (only 2 hours from the cavern), but I’m just not into 2 star motels anymore. So I planned on using a nice hotel in Bakersfield as my base, driving 4 hours for a 1 hour cave tour, and then returning back to Bakersfield afterwards. Dumb. What could possibly go wrong with that? And the next morning, my plan was to drive to Sequoia National Park to hike Moro Rock (2+ hour drive), check out some other touristy spots (more big trees), and then spend the night at another Hilton Hotel in Fresno. Another 2+ hour drive. That leaves me with a 3.5 hour drive home on Monday. Phew. Enough of the introduction…on to the details.

Spoiler Alert – Success, but exhausted

A Cave Way Too Far

OK, I need to enroll myself in a “Cavern Tour Anonymous” program. The Cave of the Winds in Colorado likely pushed me into the obsession level, but at least it was only an hour or so drive from where I was staying, in the middle of a major tourist destination. I drove for over eight hours round trip for a 60 minute tour in a relatively small cavern. The tour ended a bit after 3PM, so along with an 18 mile drive on a rutted road to get back to the highway, I wound up driving down a winding mountain highway in the dark, battling big rigs for the left lane, for the last two hours of my ride back to Bakersfield. Ugh.

But, the cave was interesting. It is the only public accessible cavern in California that is a state park, all the rest are privately owned except for the one, Crystal Cavern in Sequoia National Park (still on my bucket list). The drive from anywhere to this place is long and once you get off the highway, you are on a rough but mostly paved road which splits off to some interesting camping areas. The cavern was developed by a couple (Jack and Ida Mitchell), who purchased the area with a mining claim, but like most every other cavern I’ve been to this year, they quickly realized there was more value in developing a tourist attraction.

The state park staff lives on-site in the original stone buildings – there’s a small visitor center, a camping area and restrooms with running water. And a pay phone kiosk next to the restrooms. I think it still works. It may be the last one in the state. Maybe the country.

There is a half-mile hike down a well maintained trail, mostly level, which has a bridge constructed across a deep wash. Incredible views of the desert. As you approach the bridge, you get your first view of the entry to the cavern. As it turns out there is one at the other end of the tour. This is actually a small cavern compared to the complex ones I’ve been to across the state. There are only a few rooms, and at the end, you can either exit there and walk back along the trail, or just trace your steps back to where we entered. It would be really hard to get lost in this cave. Unless the lights go out.

The tour guide was a State Park employee, and knew the history, geology and then some, about the cave. The features were for the most part, the same as what you see in any cave. The big difference is that this one is really old – 20 million years, and also dry. It is in the latter stage of cave life, where nothing is growing, but things are starting to break – many of the stalactites are stubbed off. You don’t see that many in younger caves. The tour guide also discussed some microbiology topics which I had never heard about and which I’m now reading about. Mind blowing stuff.

The other peculiar difference with this cave was that it was actually two different caves. The Park Service drilled a passage between the main cave, and a small, south facing one a few decades ago. The smaller had been used by humans in the past for storage, and was also frequented by ice age beasties. But since it had a south face, it was always warmer, and the temperature difference created a pressure differential, which created a breeze heading into the main cavern. This blew a lot of dust in, and also impacted the overall environment in the main cavern. So, the Park Service eventually installed steel doors at either end of the connection tunnel, Something else I’ve never seen before.

The other nice feature in this cave was the lighting – lots of it. The guide was constantly hitting switches along the way. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to capture video on the GoPro camera in low lighting, but did not really need it.

And now, for a bunch of photo’s

The tour ended about 3:00PM, and the walk back to the visitor center was pretty quick. My Forest Gump brace and new hiking shoes, made a big difference in my stability on a trail. I started my drive back to Bakersfield about 3:30PM and made it back after 8PM. If you’ve ever traveled that route, there’s a long uphill and downhill stretch from Barstow to Bakersfield. Not so bad during the day, really tough in the dark when you are tired. Most of the traffic is tractor-trailers. I was really glad to make it back to the hotel. Totally exhausted. A warm Doubletree chocolate chip cookie, followed by a couple of beers helped. Dinner was pretty good too.

If you are interested in driving to this obscure spot (there are other things to see in the middle of nowhere), here is good site to start with.

Update: Oddly enough, the San Francisco Chronicle had an article on the Mitchell Caverns in the Sunday paper today (10/26). Maybe the author read this blog?

I’ve got one more cavern on my California list – Crystal Cavern. It is closed until next summer. That’s a good thing.

Moro Rock and Gross Bathrooms

In case you are concerned about the title, I did not include any photos in this post of the bathrooms in the national park, nor will I spend much time describing them. Driving interstate highways, and visiting national parks during a government shutdown does make for some interesting and annoying challenges. I have traveled down I-5 and I-15 numerous times, and have regular pit stops along the way. Unfortunately, all the rest stops along the interstates are closed during shutdowns. That really changes everything for older folks who need to stop every 2-3 hours for bio breaks (I know, TMI). What’s definitely worse, are the bathrooms, mostly outhouses, in national parks. During one of the past shutdowns, I visited Joshua Tree. You could not get within 50 yards of any of the outhouses after a week. There was a dead zone of wildlife around each from the odor. Sequoia was just about at that point. But at least the park was open. And there are a lot of really big trees to hide behind – lots of privacy just off the road.

Jan and I visited Sequoia the first year we lived in the South Bay. I don’t remember too much about the trip – we stayed in Visalia, and spent one day in the park, just a quick in and out in the northern section. This time I entered through the south end, which seemed to be where most of the large groups of visitors were coming from. Free entry for all (I have one of the permanent senior passes). Without a park map, I had to rely on Google and Android Auto, which tends to not work too well when the internet fades in and out. But, there is just one main road running through the park, so it was not too tough figuring out how to get to Moro Rock. Why was I going there? Beats me. It just seemed like a nice hike, lots of steps, but nothing like the Manitou Incline.

I caught sight of this huge granite outcrop early on, and figured that had to be my destination. Getting there was fun – a seemingly endless number of sharp switchbacks, with lots of traffic. I eventually made it to the narrow side roads leading to the trail head parking lot, and found a close spot for the Subaru. And there was one of those toxic outhouses there. Safe for guys only.

Moro Rock is definitely one of the most interesting hikes I’ve been on. I do not know much about the history of the trail construction, but some genius engineer made a 5th-class rock climb into a relatively easy, family oriented hike to one of the most stunning overlooks I’ve been to. Sort of like Half-Dome with training wheels. There are 400 steps plus ramps, and railing going up 300’ to a narrow slice of granite, with absolutely incredible views of the surrounding peaks and lower valleys. It is a challenge for some since you are hiking at 6000’, and the exposure probably scares some folks off. But there were gobs of people, some with small children, making their way up to the top.

After spending time at altitude in Colorado, this was a snap for me, especially with my Forest Gump brace and brand new hiking shoes. Having a stable base really helps. It was amazing on top – very narrow, with a line of people waiting to take selfies and group shots at the narrow end. What amazed me was the warning sign on the railings.

Was this really necessary? They might have just posted a sign. “Don’t jump off the edge -you will die”.

I spent a lot of time taking in the view. It was stunning. I had a strange moment or two, but I’ll describe that in the journal. Overall, a great hike. The view from the top was beyond impressive.

I was pretty much ready to head back home after making it down through the crowd heading up. I stopped at a few of the tourist spots, and shot a few pictures of the big trees. Definitely more of them here than in the state park I visited a few weeks ago. What was also amazing were the burned areas – there are huge sections of torched forest throughout the park. Most of the sequoias have burn marks at the base of the trees. The Forest Service and fire crews did an amazing job of saving these incredible trees.

I had booked a hotel in Fresno when I scheduled this trip, thinking that I would be too pooped from hiking to drive the 4 hours back home from Sequoia. Smart move on my part. I was doing OK and made it to the hotel by 5PM, but I was still tired from all the driving back and forth to the cave. And this turned out to be a really nice hotel. I did not have breakfast or lunch that day, other than a bag of M&M’s, so I made up for lost time at the bar. I do not usually include photo’s from a hotel, but this one (Doubletree Fresno) is pretty amazing.

Overall, it turned into a pretty good trip. But this much driving in three days? Not going to do that again. I plan on taking it easy the next few weeks, before the Antarctica trip in November. I need to be in shape for fighting off the hordes of giant penguins. I wonder if there are any gnomes down there? I hope not.

October 21, 2025