Monument Valley is not the same anymore

Today our goal was to get from Moab to somewhere near Grand Canyon South Rim for a night. So we started very early in the morning, but first visited less known Corona Arch at the end of Potash Road. This is a big arch not covered by Arches NP, because of its location on the other side of road 191. It took us some time to get there from the parking lot and we found quite interesting shortcut that allowed us to avoid ladders. Unfortunately it was a bit more risky, but we got fun. Sun wasn't favorable for us and allowed us to take only few pictures before hiding behind dense clouds. So we were waiting about 30 minutes and decided to go, because time flew very quickly and we were in the hurry.
Almost the whole day we spent in the car, but stopped by for a short visit in Monument Valley. We were lucky. It wasn't a classic sunny day - I saw thunders, clouds and lightnings for the first time in my life in this place. Everything was different and thus much more interesting. We headed to Navajo park and got surprised - Indian stalls being always down the road 42 disappeared! You can't buy jewelery here anymore or we didn't find it. Whats even worse they are building the big hotel with the Monument Valley view just on the edge - it destroys the whole atmosphere that were here before. But what can you do - it's Indian's land and they do what they want.
Because it was really late, we decided to quickly make the classic loop, take some pictures and go farther, look for the lodging. Weather was getting worse, wind was carrying a lot of sand that was everywhere - it especially came to like our gear, so we had a lot of cleaning later that day. We somehow managed to take some good pictures and left the place that isn't the same anymore. I don't like the changes introduced here...
On our way to the hotel we stopped by Indian's restaurant in Tuba City - they had very good ribs. Unfortunately there wasn't any hotel available there, so we went farther to Flagstaff and found Days Inn there. We arrived very late, but they had Internet so spent some much time browsing e-mails and webpages before fell asleep.

Arches National Park

Arches National Park is probably very popular because of the famous Delicate Arch you can see even on Utah car license plates. For me it's a bit much - like in Poland with everything connected to John Paul II. If you overuse something, it's getting boring.
But this day our decision was to do something else with Delicate - go there for a sunset, take some pictures in gold light of late sun, then leave there till the sky will get black and everyone is gone. As usual, life verified our plans. Firstly there wasn't a good sunset - we had a lot of clouds and colors were not as perfect as we imagined. So we failed to take good pictures of Delicate in sunset light. Plan A failed.
Then we moved to plan B. In this scenario we planned to use our headlights to illuminate the arch and take some different pictures using long exposures. What's interesting it turned out that one old guy (let's call him Gringo) from New Mexico planned to do the same thing, but as later appeared, was prepared much better than us. Finally when only three of us left up there, we started to discuss different ideas and testing our light sources.

Gringo had a typical incandescent flashlight and it was giving yellow, warm colors on the arch in the dark. We had two led headlights that were giving us rather cold, white-blue colors. We agreed with Gringo to synchronize and first take pictures with all three cameras using his flashlight, then try it with ours. It was a good polish-american cooperation, like in Iraq :) Finally we got few interesting pictures. The only problem we had was focusing. Autofocus didn't work, because it was pitch black. I was trying to figure out what could be the distance to the arch and set focus manually, but finally it was very difficult and we ended with few nice pictures, but still out of focus. So idea was good, but execution not so perfect. About 10 p.m. we got bored and decided to get to the car - about 3 miles over not very well marked trail in the complete dark - moon was not there on that day. Gringo decided to go with us, so we took him. Fortunately I had saved gps track and we somehow got to the car and even led Gringo with us. He was very happy and we parted with him at the parking below.
This day we had a night reserved in Devil's Garden campground. Very nice place. It was warm night and we had an opportunity to sleep well before Double O'Arch trail planned for the next morning. We even had our private rock formation near the pad.
Next day first thing in the morning we headed to Double O'Arch trail. We passed Landscape Arch, then Wall Arch and some other minor formations. It took us some time to get to Double O'Arch, but we finally arrived. It's really amazing place to take pictures (of course when other people are not present, but it wasn't the case). Unfortunately light wasn't perfect - we just arrived a bit too late. In spite of all I was trying to take some good pictures. Hope you'll have a chance to see some of them pretty soon.
Then we returned to the campground, folded the tent and went to the Delicate Arch for another evening pictures. This time light was favorable and we took many great pictures.

Some more details

Today I decided to show you something more. I mean more about our planned trip (less than 40 days left to departure!!!). So here's the map of our planned route. As you can see, after departing Page we'll head to Toroweap - probably the most deserted point in the Grand Canyon Area, but as I heard, still accessible by car. We plan to spend at least one night there sleeping in a tent. Later we have plans for more common places like Zion NP, Bryce NP, Canyonlands NP, Arches NP - but we plan to visit some less known nooks of these famous locations. I can only say, that we also have permits for Subway in Zion NP. It seems to be very interesting place, although requiring some effort to get in.
Later we dream of seeing Monument Valley, Grand Canyon South Rim and famous Havasu Falls. In the last mentioned we have ambitious plans to get to Beaver Falls and also use alternative route to take some pictures of Mooney Falls from the top of upper canyon rim - it's the route that forks near cemetery - only that is mysterious enough to try this less known part of Havasupai reservation.
Hope you enjoy reading my scribbles? If not, then don't worry - as I promised in first blog entry, I'm doing it more for me myself than for others to read. I'm just practicing my english before the trip :) Hasta luego seniores i senioras...