My shot of Mesa Arch, the last sunrise we spent in Moab.
In the beginning of the week, we were just wrapping up our time in Moab. Our friend Sandy, and her husband, Earl, joined us for the last two days, and we shot sunset at the Windows section of Arches, and then sunrise at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park.
We had to leave Moab because I needed to fly out of St. George, UT, for my "From Focus to Finished" Kelby Training seminar in Washington, D.C. The seminar went well, but it was a rough road getting there. Karen drove me the 35 minutes from our RV park to where the GPS indicated the airport was. However, as we approached and saw a lone plane, on its side, and not another car in sight, we knew something was wrong…
^%$&**
Sure enough, we pulled up and saw a sign indicating the airport was closed. It gave an address to the new location… which was 35 minutes away! So we wrangled with the GPS again to get to the new location. After about 25 minutes more of driving, we came upon the following sign…
$%%$*^%#@&
Panic mode started. This was probably one of the only planes leaving out of St George that day, and I HAD to be on it. We finally got directions to the new location, which was truly in the middle of nowhere. Karen was driving over 90 mph to get me there on time. Luckily all worked out fine, but this was definitely a first for us.
In Zion, I was shooting the Watchman with the Virgin River as a foreground.
This is my shot of the Watchman in Zion National Park.
Anyway, after I returned from Washington DC, I was able to join Karen in Zion National Park. The only negative was that it was Memorial Day weekend, and the place was mobbed. We're still reviewing our images, but regardless of how they came out, we had a good time. We had a wonderful dinner at the Spotted Dog restaurant just outside of Zion in the town of Springfield. (Totally recommend this place, if you're ever in the area.)
Before we arrived in Zion, we made a stop in the itty bitty town of Virgin, UT. There's a funky place en route to the park that makes for a great shooting location (if it's not loaded with kids, that is). Lots of goofy looking western-style buildings, with a petting zoo and a little shop with a lot of character.
On the technology front, we ordered a fancy router (Cradlepoint MBR1400) that is supposed to give us the following benefits: 1) Ability to "load share" two wireless cards (Verizon for both of us) to double our speed when one person is using the internet and allow Karen to use some of my bandwidth since I have a 20GB monthly cap, while her plan only offers 5GB, 2) Rebroadcast campground wifi within the bus over both a secure internal Wifi network and via ethernet. We've had *very* mixed results so far and will need to be in touch with tech support to see if they can smooth things out. We've just had too many instances when we can't get on the net and have to restart the device or do manual changes to the configuration.
Here's a different perspective of the Watchman in Zion.
Tomorrow we'll end up in the Page, Arizona area. Much to shoot there! More to come…