We've got to give him more time...

I am now caught up on photo posts and posts that I couldn't get photos to upload, so scroll down to check them out and check the full album link in the left sidebar.

While on the subject, the album export I used from Aperture doesn't list all the album pages from the index, so you have to page through the album to see additional pages at the end, where the most recent pictures are.

Hoover Dam is big.

You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam is, like a giant rock, hard to photograph.  Ansel Adams photographed it from downstream, where mere mortals like myself would not be allowed today. 

So I had to work with what I could get from the dam and parking lots around it.  So I got a few shots I am happy with walking across the dam and back.

As I walked, I watched couples and families drive the dam with their windows down, taking pictures, or trying, in the 30 seconds that it takes to cross the dam.  From the dam in a car all you can really see is the canyon walls and the power lines.

When I am photographing something, I like to know it first or, to invoke Heinlein, to grok it.  This doesn't always work out; it is impossible to grok Death Valley in 4 days, but knowing something about the geography, geology, and ecology helps.  This is why photography projects take a long time for me.  I'm looking, or trying to look, at the truth of each facet of the thing.

It isn't possible to grok, or even to know Hoover Dam without walking it, seeing the inside of the dam, feeling the vibration of the turbines, or looking down the long face of the dam and imagining falling the 1244ft. to the bottom.  Can you really claim to have been to Hoover Dam if you've just ridden over it in a car and shot a picture of the canyon?  You certainly haven't experienced the dam, one of the most remarkable works of man in the last 100 years, and possibly of all time.

Where my nose ends and space begins.

Humans have been doing the road trip for a long time. A lot of American History can be described as a search. A search for the intangible which becomes a search for a place where we think this intangible exists, or can be made by our own hands. So we sail across the ocean in search of freedom from tyranny, we cross the plains in a wagon in search for our "destiny," across the continent on a train in search of progress, and to the stars in search of man's ultimate crown.

When I planned this trip, packed the Subie and set off for Death Valley, I didn't think I was in search of anything at all. But now I think, in the middle of America, I might be searching for something. Perhaps being on the road has stripped away preoccupations and distractions that were preventing this realization, or perhaps the nature of the road trip created the search in me.

I try to live with as few regrets as possible. Not that I am the skydiving, bull-running, Killamanjaro-climbing type, but that I have enough in my past to haunt me for more than a lifetime. One regret that I don't mind confessing is that I didn't do this until I had turned 30. I regret that at 18 I wasn't at a place in my life to pack a car and just drive places I hadn't been and stay there until I was ready to move on. I regret not drinking milkshakes in crappy roadside diners that are so unremarkable as to be special because they exist without being special. I regret not sharing a campfire with strangers.  I regret not stopping to talk on the trail.  I regret not searching for the intangible on a desert road that leads nowhere because it leads everywhere. I regret not driving across the country with someone I hardly know until we came to the place that we would always know each other.

I don't know what it is that I am searching for, but I do know that it isn't Nashville, or a job, or a better life or bigger car or a house. Pressed to it, I might be searching for the absence of all those things. But I don't know for sure now, and may not for some time; maybe this trip is far too short to find out.

There's something very weak coming through...

Either this roadside hotel internet or blogger is being freakstastically lame.

I am still trying to get some basic posting and image uploading done but have not been successful in 3 freaking hours.

Apologies for this, I'm going to get dinner and try again later.

Fire. F-F-F-Fire.

I'll warn you now, there are more shots of rocks in this post.  Rocks are hard to shoot 'cause, well, they're rocks.  And big rocks, like those you will see shortly are even harder.  It is really tough to communicate the grandeur of these formations with such a short visit.  There are more examples of most of these in the full resolution gallery linked in the sidebar.

What color is the giant rock formation in YOUR bedroom?

One of the things to see in Valley of Fire is Petroglyph Canyon.  There are lots of petroglyphs that have survived here from long lost cultures.

Formations in the sandstone, including Arch Rock, the Beehive, other details.

Be just like Mosaic Canyon back home.

The road to Mosaic Canyon was just 10 yards up the road from Stovepipe Campground. It's long uphill hike through huge slabs of polished marble framed with red rock cliffs. I started up Mosaic Canyon just after midday and went as far as I could without bouldering while wearing all my photo gear. In the 3 or so hours on the trail much of the canyon never saw full sun because the walls are so high.

Geological forces are still at work in Death Valley.  Some point in the recent past, this boulder rolled off a ledge some 20 feet above to rest in trail.

Details of marble and rock from Mosaic Canyon.

There are many more pictures from Mosaic Canyon in the full gallery, linked in the sidebar.

I'll return. I promise.

More posts and photos coming.  I was on the road for two days. I have internet now, but have spent most of my time trying to get high resolution pictures uploaded.

That shouldn't be hard, should it?