Four Corners: Colorado

April 14, 2022: After leaving Blanding, we cross the sagebrush country into southwest Colorado, stopping at Hovenweep National Monument in the afternoon to hike around Little Ruin Canyon. After circling the canyon and photographing the ancient watchtowers with Sleeping Ute Mountain looming in the backdrop, we drive east into Colorado and have dinner in Cortez before checking into our motel.

April 15, 2022: We leave Cortez in the early morning to enter Mesa Verde National Park and catch sunrise at the Mancos Valley Overlook; unfortunately, I forget my tripod at the overlook, and it is stolen in the intervening hour before we return from the top of Chapin Mesa. The rest of the morning (minus frantically backtracking to the overlook and then filing a lost item report with the NPS crew) is spent on Chapin Mesa, visiting the Square Tower House and Sun Temple, and viewing the Fire Temple and Cliff Palace from across the canyon. Unfortunately, the Cliff Palace loop is closed due to road repairs, and we are too early in the season for guided tours of the cliff dwellings, so our Mesa Verde experience is a perfunctory one. We hike the Petroglyph Trail along Spruce Canyon before returning down off the plateau and relaxing for the rest of the afternoon in Cortez.

April 16, 2022: After breakfast at our motel, we make the long drive from Cortez back to Albuquerque by way of Gallup. We stop at Malpais National Monument to photograph a large rock arch beneath the cliffs, before passing through Acoma and Laguna pueblos on our way back tothe city. We eat lunch in Old Town Albuquerque and buy chips with a jar of green chile salsa to enjoy in the motel. The next day, we fly back to Boston with a brief pit stop in Chicago, returning home late at night.

Wyoming: Return to the Range

Hard to believe, but it’s been four and a half years since our honeymoon in Wyoming, a third of that time shrouded in the fog of a global pandemic. Spurred by an aching desire to get back into the world, Jane and I booked a return trip to Jackson Hole almost a year ago, when the COVID-19 vaccines were merely whispers and rumor. We held onto those plane tickets like little totems of sheer, dumb hope - hope that life would eventually return to some semblance of normalcy, that old familiar places and memories of happier days might be just around the corner. Our flights connect in Chicago and Denver instead of Salt Lake City this time, and we’re pausing busy attending/scientist lives instead of coming off a whirlwind intern-year wedding. I’m a better photographer. It’s the height of autumn in the Rockies, instead of late spring. But despite the masked faces in the airport terminals and the ever-changing world, there are some things that remain, comfortingly, the same. The Tetons are just as imposing and majestic as we left them four years ago; it’s hard to find a meal anywhere except the Signal Mountain Lodge; and trading wildlife stories is still topic du jour for every encounter with a friendly hiker, photographer, and binocular-wearing enthusiast on the trail. In the face of our little growing and receding human lives, the national parks continue to have a constancy and reliability that is all their own.

After a unusually leisurely early afternoon flight out of Boston (enough time for a lunch at Legal Seafoods in the airport), we arrive in Jackson Hole by way of Chicago. It’s near sundown, and we’re due for beautiful light as a storm front moves in from the southwest, down the valley. We zip from the tarmac to the inside of our rental car in record time (9 minutes including a bathroom break; I don’t think we’ll ever beat this one), and drive a few miles to photograph sunset at the Blacktail Ponds. At the overlook, we’re treated to a perfect re-introduction to the Teton Range: gold and magenta clouds catching upon the peaks, light receding behind the mountain wall, and in the foreground, the meandering Snake River passing us beyond stands of spruce, cottonwood, and willow. In the distance, we hear the sounds of bull elks bugling - their haunting screams echoing across the mountain slopes. Fall is in full procession here; I set up my tripod and shoot timelapses of the sweeping clouds, and close and far shots incorporating the golden foliage. As the sun sets, we drive northeast on the highway past the park’s east entrance gate, arriving after half an hour at our lodging for the next four nights: a cabin at the Heart Six Ranch in Buffalo Valley. We break out our electric water kettle from home, and settle in after a dinner of instant noodles, dried fruit, and canned goods.

The second day of the trip is a roving one; owing to a patchwork of weather systems and rainstorms blowing in off the peaks, we elect to stay near the car and hit some high-yield photography locations. We start with sunrise at Oxbow Bend. The light is overall lacklustre, owing to a bank of high clouds shrouding us to the east, but the sight of Mt. Moran looming over the horizon and the colors of the maples and alders reflected in the river, all suffused in the pink glow of dawn, is nevertheless very pretty. We move a short distance east, walking toward Signal Mountain past a stand of aspen trees, and taking in views of the Snake River. I shoot another timelapse here as storm clouds close in on the Teton Range; we make a hasty retreat back to the car as raindrops begin to land from a distance.

Back in the car, we head toward Jackson for groceries to round out our instant noodle and snack stash from home. Along the highway, we catch amazing light near the Triangle X Ranch, and we revisit some old scenes from our honeymoon: the Snake River Overlook (still nothing like in Ansel Adams’ day, though gorgeous with the autumn colors) and Schwabacher Landing (a lovely mountain scene with the aid of golden cottonwoods and dramatic skies). In town, Jackson is crawling with other tourists and their cars; we avoid the center of town and make a quick grocery stop at Albertson’s before returning back to Buffalo Valley for a break and an afternoon nap.

In the late afternoon, we head back into the park to scout out more compositions for sunset. Sunset itself turns out to be a bust, as another wall of storm clouds descends from the mountains (a daily occurrence, it seems), shrouding the whole range from view. We stop and shoot at the Willow Flats Overlook (unable to explore, as the area is closed due to bear activity) and make an abortive attempt at getting dinner in the Jackson Lake Lodge (no chance in hell) before retreating to our ranch for another instant noodle dinner. The loveliest images of the evening come from a spur-of-the-moment roadside stop just west of Buffalo Valley, and at the very end of the golden hour, on the road just outside of our cabin.

Wyoming: Two Ocean Lake

There are a number of places that I intended to visit after getting married four years ago - but time, weather, and fatigue got the better of us at the end of that honeymoon trip, and we only ever had two days to spend in the vicinity of the Tetons, anyways. Two Ocean Lake is such a place. Nestled in a high valley to the east of the main range, the lake is just far enough from the park to feel like a world unto itself, host to a beautiful blend of riparian, deciduous, and alpine ecosystems. In an entire morning of hiking, we see only four other people - and one very lazy bull moose. We wake shortly after sunrise to see the previous night’s thunderstorm clearing against the Tetons’ main peaks - the soaring pinnacles known as the Cathedral Group, including Teewinot, Mt. Owen, and the Grand itself. In the car, we make the brief drive into the park and turn down Pacific Creek. We find lovely photographic conditions all along the drive up to Two Ocean Lake: mist hanging over the creek against a backdrop of freshly fallen snow, and glorious aspens set alight by the rising sun.

At the lakeside trailhead, we gear up for an eight-mile lariat hike (longer than, but reminiscent of, our lariat at the Bubbles on Mount Desert Island): a six-mile loop around Two Ocean Lake itself, and a mile up and down to Grand View Point, atop the ridgeline that separates the lake from the main valley. After a year without serious hiking at altitude (thanks, Massachusetts), we make surprisingly good time around the lake - or, we would, if I weren’t constantly stopping for photographs, in utter awe at the beauty of the scenery. We nearly stumble upon a bull moose resting no more than forty or fifty yards off the trail; we carefully tiptoe a wide semicircle around it, but the moose seems far too comfortable and complacent this morning to give us any trouble. At the northwestern end of the lake, we push up into the forest and make a steep, switchbacking climb to the top of the ridge, where we’re treated with sweeping views of snow-dusted pine trees, rolling clouds to the horizon, the Tetons rising beyond Jackson Lake to the west, and Two Ocean Lake below us to the east, shining like a mirror. We stop here for a snack break (bread rolls, dried fruit, and trail mix), a timelapse, and some selfies along the ridgeline. Descending the hill, we make good time back to the car, power-walking the southern half of lakeside loop, which is mostly forested and has much less going for it in terms of scenery and open views - 3 miles in an hour. Overall, we cover 8 miles in roughly 4 hours. Back at the ranch, we stop in the diner for a well-earned lunch (a burger for me, a club sandwich for Jane, and huckleberry milkshake between us). We take the rest of the afternoon off, shooting a lovely sunset timelapse at the ranch - just steps away from our cabin, and far-removed from the sightseering crowds of the national park.