Southwest Sojourn

There comes a time on many blogs where nothing is posted for an extended period of time. In many cases, the author comes round some time later and says, "Wow, I haven't posted anything in a while, but I'm back! I'm going to start posting regularly again." And then that's the last post on the blog, ever.

Well, I'm not going to be "that guy." At least, that's the intent.
We start today with a recap of a recent road trip. We traveled through six states and 2,500+ miles over the course of four and two-half days.
The highlight of the trip was White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, which was one of the most amazing places I've ever visited. This is the world's largest gypsum dune field, and camping out on the dunes was a great idea.
Mostly.
My two friends decided it would be an even better idea to just pull out sleeping bags and sleep on top of the dunes, rather than in the tent, which was pitched in the area between two dunes.
I was not too fond of this idea. While the moon was rising to the east, there was a spectacular lightning display over the mountains to the west, and the south also looked rather gloomy.
Nonetheless, we sat out on top of the dunes attempting to photograph lightning.
And then the wind picked up. A lot. The tent at the base of the dunes almost blew away. Our equipment was bombarded with sand. We scurried down the dune to secure the tent, which was quite the ordeal. We re-pegged it and pulled off the rain cover, because although it looked like it could start raining any moment, the wind was threatening to blow the cover off anyway.
This was enough to convince my friends to not sleep on top of the dunes.
The next day, we drove to Colorado. As it was getting dark, we stopped to take pictures on a mountain pass at an elevation of 11,000 feet, where the outside temperature was near freezing. Given we were out in the desert in temperatures close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit just several hours prior, we were not prepared for this.
So how exactly does one follow up a visit to one of the most incredible places he's seen? While in Colorado, we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, which is the 11th least visited National Park in the U.S.
Actually, this wasn't until after we tried a spot of rock climbing. Well, rappelling, to be more precise. We climbed up the back route because that didn't require any aid.
The rock face was perhaps a hundred feet or so. From the base it looks like much less, and from above it looks like much more. You know, the usual. As someone who has never done this before, somewhat scary. However, this was not nearly as harrowing as the time in Arizona when used a rope (and no harness) to get in and out of a slot canyon which was about 20 feet deep. That time, I feared for my life. This time I had a harness. Actually, at that point in my life I wouldn't have minded if I'd died, but I certainly would have minded if I were to be badly injured. Given a choice at that point I would have chosen certain and instant death, but I digress.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is so named because the canyon is so narrow and deep that sunlight rarely shines through, causing it to appear dark. This makes it an incredibly difficult subject to photograph, as cameras cannot handle such a wide dynamic range. The solution I took was to bracket almost every exposure and merge them into HDR images, but none of them really turned out very well anyway.
In fact I got better pictures on the drive back, through Utah.
 
I thought I could write something interesting. I failed.