In 2021, my wife and I had spent six long months apart while she was away on a travel nursing assignment in Zuni, New Mexico, and this gallery showcases some photos I captured on the wonderful trip to bring her and her belongings back home.

The journey started with my flight into Grand Junction Regional Airport in western Colorado to meet her, and it ended with a week-long drive back home together. We decided that the best way to start our trip home was to drive in the exact opposite direction towards Moab, Utah. Here we explored Arches National Park as well as Dead Horse Point State Park and a very small portion of Canyonlands National Park at twilight. One of my favorite things about the whole region, where the Utah Mighty Five reside, are the dark skies. Knowing that I would be in a place with a good opportunity for astrophotography, I rented the Sony 18mm f/1.8 lens. While I do not want to under express my appreciation of the benefits of clouds during the day (namely shade), at night they became a semi-literal wet blanket. All I captured was Moab’s (minuscule) light pollution bouncing off the clouds and assaulting my camera’s sensor through the unguarded corridor of my rented lens. The worst part about this was that we decided to come back that night to hike to Delicate Arch with our headlamps instead of doubling our efforts to also see it during the day. That night, after returning to the park, we stopped to take photos at Balancing Rock and realized the futility of it; we never saw Utah’s most famous arch. After experiencing those beautiful spots (as well as the sting of consequences created by poor planning), we returned to our Airbnb and prepared for the next day's five-hour drive to Rocky Mountain National Park. We spent two nights there and explored the famous Stanley Hotel (the hotel that helped to inspire The Shining; it's a fun little bit of history to look into if you’re the curious type) and, of course, the park.

In doing research about the parks that we’d be visiting, I learned that we would be in RMNP during rut (or mating season), and that meant that we would not want to be anywhere near moose or elk (I mean, technically you wouldn’t want to be too close to them regardless. They are big…Quite big…), so I rented Sony’s 200-600mm lens with a Sony 1.4x teleconverter. All that to say that it's a massive lens and extension that together weigh about 5 lbs. I know this doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re lugging that thing along with a camera body, several other lenses, as well as several other various goods up 1,100 ft at an elevation that starts about 8,000 ft above the elevation you normally live at over a distance of 7 miles, it does add up to being a bit much. And how many shots did I lug that massive thing through RMNP for, you ask? None. At least none that I felt were interesting enough to share. We saw one moose the entire trip and then a herd of elk, but it was late at night by that time and I had that barrel of metal and glass securely packed away in the trunk of the car. Aaaaand I was too afraid of being gored by an animal 3 times larger than me to get out of the car to retrieve it. Luckily, that lens did get used one early morning outside the park at Shadow Mountain Lake, where you can see some of those photos in this gallery. Those photos would be of the various birds and fog rolling in over the mountains. While our trip prior to this one was all about learning to adapt and roll with the punches, this one was more about learning the importance of proper planning. On top of missing out on Delicate Arch, we also made the fun mistake of turning 3 smaller hikes - where the intention was to return to the trailhead and get water from the provided drinking fountains and retrieve snacks from our car before starting the next hike - into one really long one where we only had enough water and snacks for a single short hike. You know the one I mentioned earlier about 7 miles and 1,100 feet of elevation gain? That was the one. We both had 17oz Swell bottles and a few smalls snacks that I do not remember. Oh and a LifeStraw! Which we would’ve happily used on some of the many streams we encountered had we had the foresight to condition it. Man, Boy Scouts really didn’t stick like it probably should have… Needless to say we absolutely demolished some pizza after finally exiting the park. It was also on this hike that we had learned that a close family friend had passed away when we got into a small pocket where we had service. It was a weird mix of emotions worrying about whether or not we’d be able to get out of the park safely and the sudden loss that it didn’t fully hit us until we were sitting in that pizza joint praying over our food. I don’t think I’ll ever forget sitting in a fairly crowded pizza joint as tears streamed down my face and worrying that the people around us would think that I had covid because I was blowing my nose so much. As pretty as RMNP is, this heart-wrenching news, our unfortunate lack of wildlife encounters, and our own mistakes colored our impressions when we had such high expectations for the park. If we had experienced it the way we have heard many others have, we’d probably rank it higher, but alas, it sits further back in both of our lists.

After leaving RMNP, we headed east towards home, where we stayed in Ellis, Kansas (we actually had a converted chicken coop as an Airbnb), Springfield, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee (where we explored Graceland) before heading the rest of the way home. I got a few photos after leaving RMNP, but none that I felt were worthy of sharing. Actually the only shots I got after leaving RMNP were taken in Kansas of corn. Lots and lots of corn. Well… ENJOY!