11 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA PHONE

I drove a short way down a dirt road in Wyoming to get some photos of a small herd of pronghorn antelope. Nervous at first they became more and more curious and then finally, two walked straight over toward my pickup truck to have a good look. When the herd did decide to move on, they got to speed quickly as they accelerated across the dirt road in front of me.

Here is some trivia on pronghorn antelope that I included with the Nevada pronghorn I saw on this trip:

I saw hundreds of pronghorn antelope on this road trip. Most in Nevada and Wyoming. These "built for purpose" animals have long fascinated me. If you know their basics, you should skip the next paragraphs of narrative:

Pronghorn Antelope [Antilcapra americana] are not true antelope but as we call American bison, by the mistaken name of buffalo, the pronghorn handle is with us.

They can't jump, though they look like they could and should be able to. When they come to a fence they either crawl through it or under it at astonishingly high speeds at time.

I watched four male pronghorn in Wyoming do this, one after the other, and got a few photos of that, which I will post when I get to the Wyoming section of this road trip photo stream.

Pronghorn antelope have horns, not antlers. Males always have them, females sometimes. They do shed the outer layer of their horn, but never the entire horn itself.

Antlers are shed and regrown every year. Moose, elk, and deer have antlers. Bighorn Sheep, mountain goat, and pronghorn antelope...have horns.

Male pronghorns have a black crescent marking at the back of their lower jaw, while females do not.

They are custom built for speed and endurance and can run over 40 mph for long distances, easily outrunning any natural predator, when healthy.

They are extremely curious and will approach anything that captures their attention. Again, in Wyoming I was photographing a small herd, when two of the females, started walking intently and with purpose, directly to my red pickup truck, which is what I think caught their fancy.

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May 12th through May 19th - - I traveled 9 states in 8 days, camping, driving back roads, visiting scenic and historic sites, and taking some great day hikes. These are some of the photographs from this solo "road trip".

Day One: Home in Eastern Washington; Mountain Home, Idaho; Owyhee, Nevada and a very cold night camped at Wild Horse Crossing south of Mountain City, Nevada.

Day two: NEVADA - - Mountain City; Elko; Wells; Ely (through a snow storm); Panaca. UTAH - - Enterprise, Veyo, to a warm and scenic enjoyable camp and hiking at Snow Canyon.

Day three: UTAH - - Snow Canyon; St. George; Hurricane; to Fredonia, Arizona. Forest Service Road #22 and many others to places like Monument Point and Indian Hollow. Too cold to camp (got down to 19 degrees that night), so dropped down low to BLM wilderness land off 89 A and spent the night among sagebrush and juniper with curious mule deer as "neighbors".

Day four: Opening day of the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. Visited the park and arriving early had many places (Cape Royal), entirely to myself. ARIZONA: Vermillion Cliffs; Page; Kaibito; and Navajo National Monument and Betatakin, where I had my nicest camp site (Canyon View at Betatakin).

Day five: Betatakin camp to Kayenta; Monument Valley to drive the 17 mile "loop road" through the monument; to Mexican Hat to recharge my camera battery (Canon G10) while eating Navajo stew and fry bread at a cafe along the San Juan River; to Comb Ridge where I took two short enjoyable "rock art and cliff dwelling" hikes (procession panel and Monarch Cave ruins; up to Blanding, Utah where I checked into a small motel for two nights.

Day six: Get up early and hike a bit over 14 miles down Kane Gulch; down Grand Gulch to Todie Canyon, with many side excursions to visit cliff dwellings, granaries, rock art sites, etc. Weather started to blow in by the time I finished my hike.

Day seven: Changed my mind with the weather. Instead of heading for the Bisti Wilderness (for the first time) and Chaco Canyon (for the third time) - - I headed north through Moab then turned east toward Grand Junction, Colorado. Stopped at Sego Canyon rock art site outside of Thompson Springs, Utah. COLORADO - - Grand Junction, Rifle, Craig. WYOMING - -Baggs, Rawlins, Lander, Dubois (where I got a real nice motel room for a reasonable rate).

Day eight: Left Dubois, Wyoming early. Cold, windy, cloudy weather with a hint of snow in the air. Drove up through Yellowstone Park and exited via Mammoth Hot Springs; then on to Livingston, Montana. On I-90; hitting sun, the clouds, the rain, then a nasty storm (between Missoula, Montana and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho). Slept in pickup camper before driving on through the early morning back to my home in Eastern Washington.

Day nine: Arrived home at 4:30 am. Another fun road trip.

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Ma

Must see viewed full-size on black, click the image or press ‘L’.

The shot that almost never happened, I barely managed to capture this stunning sunrise. I got the vision and inspiration from a shot I had seen in some online Nature photography publication. It ended up being one of my favorite images from the whole cross-country trip.

Two years ago now during late May and Early June of 2009, I, my wife, and her Father took a cross-country trip to the Western coast of the US and back (our first). I had planned out the trip extensively to be able to witness sunrise and sunsets at various locations. I had calculated based on time zone differences and new exactly how long we could afford to stay in area etc. to keep with the schedule. What choice do you have when you’re trying to hit a ton of stuff in only 17 days? Heck I had the whole thing on GPS and mapped on Google Maps, there and back. Well as it turns out, driving and camping almost 8600 miles is exhausting....I'm getting tired just writing that. Things didn't exactly go as planned come the home stretch of the trip. We ended up staying a night at a Marriot Fairfield somewhere in-between Northern, CA and South Dakota, which screwed up the time table. We were originally supposed to keep driving and rotating shifts. At any rate we just barely made it in time (really a little late as far as I'm concerned) for the most spectacular sunrise I had ever seen in my life, which I almost missed because I was sleeping in the back of the van. We floored it into the park and having never been there before, I just made a random call to stop at the first location that looked like my vision, a pure guess really.

Pretty lucky guess, everything fell together for this image. But I had to literally dive out of the van and sprint with camera and tripod in hand to get it. Unfortunately I have a crappy tripod and had a non IS Canon EF 70-200mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens, neither of which benefited the situation of quite a bit of wind and scramble to get a few shots in the maybe 6-10 minutes I had left of good sunrise and fantastic light. I don't know if the lens failed me this one time when it mattered or it was the wind, or the fact that I was rushing but consequently the shot is not the sharpest. But better to have the shot than no shot at all, there was zero time for fumbling with filters or anything for that matter. Fortunately it was sharp enough to make a gorgeous 16x20 and I think I could probably get away with a 20x30 at proper viewing distances.