Buena Vista, Overton Nv

One thing that I love about Moapa Valley is that I have plenty of chances to snap the shutter of my Nikon. This spot is about 15 minutes from the house. I have many memories of my younger days, making the trek up the rough road to this beautiful lookout with my dad. The place is called Buena Vista. If I remember correctly it was built by the CCC boys back in the day during the Great Depression, not to be confused with the current great Recession.

The family and I headed up here to watch the sun set and, of course, take a few pictures. It has a great view of Moapa Valley and, what was once the Overton Arm of Lake Mead. Lake Mead, I guess, is also in a great recession. If it recedes much more than it already has I wont be able to launch the boat at Echo Bay. Hopefully the politics calm down and they will start filling up Mead instead of topping Powell off. However I think I have digressed a little from the photography so I'll move on.

Anyways if you get the chance head on up to Buena Vista point above Overton Nevada off the North Shore road. In my opinion its worth the rough road to see a little bit of Gods good country.

Yet Another Bunkerville Mountain Trip

We had so much fun on our trip last weekend up the mountain that we wanted to go back again. However, we left earlier this time so we had more time to actually make it up the mountain, explore new trails, see new parts of the mountain, cook up lots of hot dogs on the fire, drink lots of root beer and fill up on the refreshing cool waters at Wire Grass. It was a great trip.

This first panorama is of the upper Grand Wash Cliffs. You are up a little higher in elevation so it was nice and cool and the leaves were starting to change so it kind of felt like fall (its nice to feel like there is a change in seasons somewhere in the world besides summer and winter). If you look close in the last picture there is a snake hiding in the bushes. The word is that the government by the people, for the people is going to restrict access soon to this part of the mountain to the people so you had better go see it while you can.

Do you see the snake?

Bunkerville Mountain Trip Part II

Here are a couple more that I took on our Bunkerville trip. It was such a fun ride. I always forget how beautiful it is up there. If you look close on the first picture below you can see the Virgin River, the Reservoir and most of Moapa Valley. If you get up higher on the mountain you can see Mesquite, Moapa, and parts of Las Vegas at night.

Bunkerville Mountain (Virgin Mountain Range) Panoramas

Last weekend the family and I headed up to Bunkerville Mountain, or as its listed on the maps Virgin Mountain Range, however growing up it was always Bunkerville Mountain. Plus being that part of my job is to make maps I know not to always beleive whats on them. Ever since I have found out how to stitch photos together in Photoshop I have been experimenting with taking panoramas. Here are a couple from our trip.

Paria Canyon

Bryce Airport

The picture probably has more meaning if you have heard Grandpa Bill tell his story about painting the yellow letters on the roof. However whether you have heard the story or not I hope you enjoy it.

Sheep

Here are some shots of some sheep was saw on the way home

Steps of the Staircase

Here are a couple more shots from our trip last weekend. It was fun to hear all of dads stories about growing up in this rough country. If you want to see much of this country you had better do it quick. The governement is shuting more and more of it down for public use. Every which way you turned it was road closed.

Scanning the country over

The Canaan

Last weekend dad and I headed out for the hills. These pictures are from our ride in the morning up to Canaan Peak. The first picture is a test for shooting panoramic shots. For next time I need to set the exposures so they are all the same for all the shots. I found in photoshop how to stitch them together and it makes it very easy to do. If you are interested look up photomerge. The panoramic shows pretty much the whole lower piece of the Grand Staircase. On the far left if you look really close (you might not be able to see because I had to shrink the image down so it was easy to upload) you can see the Smoke coming of the Page power plant. On the right you are looking towards Panguitch and in the middle you are looking at Mollies Nipple and Kanab Utah. The rest of the pictures are just shots I took on the way up. I took almost 200 pictures so I hope to be posting a lot for the next few days.