Utah Red Rocks Image Gallery 3 - Photographs by Robert F. Riberia

Here's another fresh batch of photos from the heart of Red Rock Country.  I love taking these photos, and I really love sharing them with anyone who is interested in this area.  I hope you all have the opportunity to come out here and take your own photos!  As I compiled this latest bunch I realized, once again, just how much I love living here.  Moving to southern Utah was the best thing my wife and I ever did.  If you get nothing else out of this website, remember this: If you have a favorite place that you feel drawn to - a place that you really want to live in - MOVE THERE!  Do whatever it takes to get there.  Don't put it off - don't think of reasons why you should wait (there will always be some) - take a BIG risk and jump into it as soon as possible.  Do it now. There's no time like the present. Why live somewhere that you hate?  If you really want to be somewhere, you can make it work as long as you make the commitment.  Get your priorities straight and live.  You only live once folks - and not for all that long.  None of us will live forever, and none of us can guarantee that we will be alive in another year or two.  I can guarantee that living in a place that you love is the most wonderful and fulfilling thing that a person can do, wherever that place may be!!!  Every other aspect of the relatively mundane aspects of "simply surviving" will fade into insignificance.  Go for it.

Description: Colorado River Gorge - This is the view that awaits backcountry travelers at the very end of the "Chicken Corners Trail".  The Chicken Corners Trail starts at Hurrah Pass (14.7 miles from Moab) and continues for 11.2 miles beyond it.  The trail requires a 4WD vehicle and is a very entertaining way to spend the good part of a day.  Round trip distance from Moab is 52 miles. This view of the Colorado River Gorge was taken in February, 2002.  Although we had a very light winter, you can see some snow in the shadowed areas of the distant cliffs.  If we get any snow during the winter in Moab, it usually only hangs around in shaded areas.  This particular spot is located directly across the river from the overlook at Dead Horse Point State Park.  Interesting note: The final scene from the movie Thelma and Louise was shot on the cliffs on the opposite side of the river. (The scene where the two fleeing woman deliberately drive their convertible over a cliff.)  
Camera/Lens: Nikon N65/28-70mm Nikkor
Film: Fuji Velvia Slide Film

Utah's Painted Desert

The area located between Hanksville and Capitol Reef National Park is often referred to as Utah's Painted Desert.  It is a desolate, haunting landscape or rolling hills of clay and mudstone, interspaced with stately mesas and butte-forms of Mancos Shale.  Appreciation of this stark landscape can be an acquired taste.  Initially repellant, its weird landforms and unearthly landscapes tend to grow on you.  Further exploration reveals a world of color and form unlike any other place on earth.  The softly contoured, banded hills of varying pastel hues of brown, red, purple, gray, and green are know as the Benotinite Hills.  They are composed of the Brushy Basin shale member of the Morrison Formation, which was formed during Jurassic times when mud, silt, fine sand, and volcanic ash were deposited in swamps and lakes.  Their unique texture and color prompted Ward Roylance to feature them on the cover of his Enchanted Wilderness book.  Trust me folks, this place is wild!  None-the-less, a trip into this area during the summer is like walking into an oven.  I've been out here when the ambient temperature is close to 110 degrees.  That heat, coupled with stagnant air and radiant heat reflected from the ground, can best be described as sweltering.  In the summer I never venture far into the backcountry of this area unless I have plenty of water.  In addition to my normal daily requirements, I always have at least 10 gallons of extra water in the back of my truck - just in case.