This picture was taken approximately five miles north of Monument Valley, Utah at 6:00am, which was actually before the full sunrise had taken place. While I was on my way to the Monument, I stopped along the road to take this photograph. I pulled off the interstate onto an access road that had a little area set up for tourists to purchase local Indian sundries. As you can imagine at that time of the morning the entire place was deserted except for one other photographer. Apparently everyone else was smart enough to still be asleep. After I took this photograph, I headed on to Monument Valley. Or attempted to at least. I did not actually make it all the way to the Valley because a few miles south I saw a sand storm approaching the exact area that I was heading to. The day before I took this photograph, I was in Canyon de Chelly and experienced my first sandstorm, which was enormous and really not something that I was interested in dealing with again. As soon as I saw the storm approaching Monument Valley, I immediately turned around and headed back north. I decided to head toward Arches National Park which is only supposed to be a 5 hour drive, but I was not able to make it until after sunset. Why did I not make it? That is for a later post. Check back soon.
Waking up at Monument Valley
Tags: Desert, HDR, Landscape, Monument Valley, Mountains, Photography, Rocks, Scenery, Sunrise
