Tag Archives: deep

Room for the Big Deep Bend

Room for the Big Deep Bend
Room for the Big Deep Bend

Room for the Big Deep Bend. Koosharem, Utah. October 8, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Scowercroft’s Never Rip Overalls – Room for the Big Deep Bend

At about the time I made this photograph, we were staying in Torrey, Utah for a few days. Instead of doing the obvious thing and heading east to visit Capitol Reef National Park again, we headed west towards points unknown but including the Fish Lake area. We passed through small towns whose lives seemed more divorced from the tourist trade than others we had been through along route 12, and eventually turned off the main highway to head up to Fish Lake. It turned out that, at least partially as a result of my decision to not do too much research ahead of time, we had missed the main fall color season there and that, in fact, the whole place was pretty much shutting down for the season. We poked around a bit here before reversing direction and heading back to highway 24.

Rather than end our exploration quite so soon, we continued on along highway 24, soon turned off into the Valley where Koosharem is located. I cannot recall now what drove the decision to go there – perhaps the unusual name of the place or maybe the possibility of getting to mountains on the far side of the valley – but there we went. We initially pretty much drove right through Koosharem and on out into the country on the other side of town, but we soon stopped and decided that this was not the direction we really wanted to go. We turned around and headed back towards Koosharem. This time a few things caught our attention, including the plain architecture of certain buildings in the town and the surprising – to us, anyway – appearance of this antiquated looking, though clearly kept up, sign on the side of this building next to a leave littered parking area that also held an ATV and some sort of small trailer. I wondered about this sign and the advertising copy it contained, and I later found out that Scowercroft and Sons was a fairly large manufacturer of clothing centered in Ogden.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Hikers, Titus Canyon

Hikers, Titus Canyon
Hikers, Titus Canyon

Hikers, Titus Canyon. Death Valley, National Park. March 28, 2010. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Hikers in Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

There are essentially two ways to get to this portion of Titus Canyon in Death Valley National Park – you can either do a very long drive from near Beatty on gravel roads or you can walk a short distance up from the base of the canyon along the eastern side of Death Valley itself. I’ve done both. The road is quite an experience – in any other park it would probably be regarded as a very special thing, especially the last portion above Death Valley where it twists and turns down a slot canyon that is in places barely wide enough to a vehicle yet so tall that it can be hard to see the tops of the canyon walls. (It is not exactly a bad road, but it isn’t trivial either. There are some very exposed sections where it crosses the mountain ridge and descends past Leadville. Although there are reports of people using lesser vehicles, take seriously the recommendations for reasonably high ground clearance and some from of all-wheel drive.)

However, on this visit I simply parked my car at the base of the canyon, shouldered my camera equipment, and walked up the canyon a ways. There is, of course, much that you probably won’t see if you enter the canyon this way, largely because the road is so long that you won’t likely cover much of it on foot. However, I think that you can more clearly sense the scale of the lower slot canyon when traveling of foot. I included two hikers who happened by to give a sense of that scale to the landscape.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns
Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns

Trail Junction, Redwood Forest and Ferns. Muir Woods National Monument, California. March 8, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A bed of ferns grows at a trail junction under deep redwood forest cover at Muir Woods National Monument.

This photograph was made in the late winter of 2009, during that time of the year when the redwood forest is still very wet and cool, but when flowers are blooming and spring is clearly on the way. The location is along the very popular (and often quite busy) main trail along the creek through the central part of the park. No doubt I had to wait a bit for the combination of these beams of light and no other visitors on the trail!

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Pacific Coast Near Bixby Creek

Pacific Coast Near Bixby Creek
Pacific Coast Near Bixby Creek

Pacific Coast Near Bixby Creek. Big Sur, California. May 13, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The blue Pacific Ocean and rugged fog-topped coastal hills meet along the Big Sur coastline at Bixby Creek.

On a nearly perfect spring morning – despite the ominous sounding Friday the 13th date! – I spent a morning along the upper Big Sur coast below Monterey, California. The brilliant sun was modulated a bit by some atmospheric haze over the ocean and occasional fog clouds clustered around the tops of the coastal hills. Since I made quite a few stops along the way, I only went as far south as the iconic Bixby Bridge. This photograph was made from very near the spot where thousands (including me!) have photographed the bridge itself – it is out of the frame to the left. On this morning, the bridge didn’t interest me much at all, so I instead photographed the wild and steep coastline, with its spring green contrasting with the brilliant blues of the coastal waters below the rugged cliffs. At the very lower left corner, Bixby Creek flows across the beach and into the Pacific Ocean. Above, the coast highway rises across the top of the coastal bluffs on its way south.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.