los fotografías

i had a sweet little pile of mexican food last night at a place called the red iguana here in the great salt lake city. thats why i now write the titles of these passages in spanish.

lets begin the begin--


crested butte, colorado: see, this is photo evidence as to why i opt out of some of the bike rides that brad insists on. he went for a ride and i went to take some photos. happenstance has it that i stumbled on this little beauty. in the background is the summit for mt. crested butte (as far as i know).


moab, utah: a young observer for the magnificent PUFF the magic (ridiculously loud) pumpkin launcher. the young fella pictured lost his hearing roughly 13 seconds later as a result of the jarring explosion that resulted after the launch. pictured below are two young ladies dancing to the tunes of the band that was playing some country hits. they were eating it up.


arches national park, utah: this would be the double arch as they call it. although it is fairly difficult to see, there is another "O" below the big one that you see as the focal point of the photo. these things are something of a legend to see. it takes thousands and thousands of years for these odd structures to form. its a combination of weather (hot and cold), erosion and composition of the rock that conceive the arch. approximately 19 minutes after taking this photo, brad would be standing on the top of double arch and drop his bike helmet that was dangling off the back of his day pack. yep, helmet got shattered.



canyonlands national park, utah: sunset. easy peasy. those are some sort of desert evergreen trees in the foreground.


dead horse point state park, utah: so this would be the actual dead horse point. pretty breathtaking view. it was cloudy as hell, but one could still manage to get a picture like this. pretty amazing. the rocks on the very bottom of those valley-like structures are over 300 million years. i forget the categorical belonging of such rock, but it is way, way, way before jurassic. pretty sweet.


goblin valley state park, utah: well, lets not lie. this photo was taken minutes before the entrance to goblin valley but it was still technically within the boundary of the park. this was, in my opinion, the ultimate desert photo-- tumbleweeds, dry and cracked soil that sees only 10 inches of rain per year and a sunbeam bursting through in the background. later, we would pee on the soil to give it some nutrients. the urine dissapeared within about 3 seconds. hungry soil!


little wild horse canyon, utah: this, similar to the photo of the desert, is just outside of goblin valley state park. you would call this here crazy rock optical illusion a slot canyon. basically, its an extremely narrow passageway (typically between 4 and 10 feet) between two fairly large mountains of rock. flash floods have ripped through the rocks to create the slot over many, many years. picture the grand canyon on a much smaller scale with only about 6 feet between the two sides of the canyon. as you can imagine, portraying a slot canyon in a photo is extremely difficult because not a lot of light gets in to the little crevice between the rocks. the photo above i thought was cool just because it looks like a vortex with those ripples. this one also had a wider opening which gives you a bit of perspective. there were times, however, when we would have to get through the rocks doing the sideways shuffle. to top all this banter off, i have inserted a photo of me trying to illustrate the the look of these slot canyons that i am talking about (it should be noted that in an effort to create this particular pose, i ripped hole number two in the crotch of my jean shorts. awesome.)

its been quite a pleasure being in salt lake city-- in a real house, with a real cousin providing hordes of hospitality (thanks jeff). its been pretty nice not sleeping in the truck for a bit. i woke up at 10:46am this morning and it felt about as good as vanilla ice cream with apple pie.

we are thinking about jetting off on sunday for jackson hole.