It took nearly an hour to discover what was happening.

We had hiked up to this meadow just outside Zermatt, on the trail that eventually leads to Zmutt and the North Face of the Matterhorn. It was getting hot, and Varenna was inspecting the gravel on the trail, handing her best specimens to Mom, and then pushing her stroller like the big girl she was proclaiming to be (“bick guhr! bick gurh!). We were all content, and not planning to go too far. After all, this appeared to be it: the iconic view of the Matterhorn, the one that conjures visions of alpenhorns and men yodeling “Ri-co-la” into the crisp glacial air.

But as we turned to head back to town, the moon was suddenly quite noticeable and on a very interesting course.

(Click on image for a larger version)

And so, over the course of maybe 20 minutes, it swooped low, landed on the summit of the Matterhorn, and temporarily turned the world’s most famous mountain into a Santa hat.

It disappeared, then reemerged, like an arrow piercing the heart of Switzerland and coming out the other side. It was our second-to-last full day in the country, but it felt like an apt conclusion to the trip.

Lucerne is said to be one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. I still have a lot of Europe to cover, but its hard to imagine a cleaner, more idyllic, more photogenic city than Lucerne. The place seems designed for postcards, coffeetable books and small 1-inch-by-1-inch decorative chocolate wrappers.

To get my best shots in Lucerne, I made my way to these places:

Capturing Blue Hour

There is a certain moment at dusk when an urban landscape looks its best. The grit fades into the shadows, the sky holds an ethereal cobalt, and the light of the buildings and streetlamps twinkle to life. It doesn’t last long, and in Lucerne I only had one true crack at it: the last night we were there. The previous two evenings I was too exhausted and jetlagged, and because the sun sets so late in Switzerland in June, I ducked in early before blue hour happened.

Fortunately, in the limited window I had, I lucked out and found one of the best vantage points in Lucerne. In the Google Map, I’ve labeled this image Jesuit Church at Blue Hour, and it was taken along the northern shore of the Reuss River.

Elements of Lucerne remind me of Venice — the stately bridges crossing placid water, the waterside restaurants with tourist menus in four languages, loads of drunks shouting into the wee hours (just add a thick cloud of rotting fish to the air and it might complete the vibe). This location, I feel, showed Lucerne at its romantic best.

Here’s another angle I played with while I had a quasi-blue hour. Like much of Europe in summer, dusk seems to last forever. It wasn’t really dark until 10pm or so, and since we were traveling with a 1-year-old, it was hard for all three of us to stay up that late. Still, from about 8:45pm to 9:45pm, there is a dwindled light that is fun to work with. From the Lake Bridge, you have this beautiful angle of both the Chapel Bridge and the Jesuit Church, with white swans in motion.

Working With Perspective

The crown jewel of Lucerne is the wooden Chapel Bridge, or Kapellbrücke, which spans the River Reuss on a diagonal. Dating back to 1333, it is historically important on two accounts: It is the oldest covered wooden bridge in Europe and the world’s oldest surviving truss bridge. It’s long corridor is decorated with paintings depicting the city’s history, though, tragically, many of these were lost in the 1993 fire that devastated much of the bridge (a boat moored to the bridge caught fire and it quickly spread).

Draped with colorful pansies and crowned by a stately brick tower, the Chapel Bridge’s exterior captures all the postcard attention. But I found the interior of the bridge provides more opportunities for creative photography. The bridge’s natural linear perspective, its artistic details, and the opportunity to incorporate the cityscape into the shot, all pose unique challenges.

The locations for the above and below photos are listed on the Google Map as Interior Chapel Bridge Shots and Interior Blue Hour Chapel Bridge, respectively.

The Postcard Shot

On the one sunny day we had in Lucerne, I rose early and so did my daughter, and the two of us cruised around the quiet city for a good 90 minutes. She’s only 1-year-old, and usually patient with me and my happy snapping. The biggest thing in Lucerne that really got her excited were the swans, and this location below — labeled Chapel Bridge and Mt. Pilatus — not only kept her happy and smiling, but it produced one of my favorite shots of the trip. I will post some tilt-shift images from here in a later post.

Beauty in the Details

Later on our trip, we went to Zermatt, where it is easy to get lulled into the habit of placing the Matterhorn in the background of every shot. The Chapel Bridge in Lucerne has a similar effect. It’s kind of like that guy at a wedding who seems to poke his head into every person’s photo and mug for the camera. Truthfully, I’m not sure I got enough variety to my Lucerne shots, but one subject that would have been fun to play with more are the town’s murals.

Colorful, vivid and lively, these painted walls decorate a few of the buildings (mostly restaurants) in the old town quarter of Lucerne. This one (above right, labeled Old Town Murals on the map) seemed to depict the harvest season, hell, and all the reasons why I hate clowns.

And this one (Zunfthaus zu Pfistern) suckered me in because I had never seen a golden pretzel before.

Finally, this fairy-tale like mural lies just across from the Harvest/Hell/Clown Show building. My one struggle in all of this was finding a unique way to frame these paintings. It just felt all too easy to crane my neck up and take a picture like a tourist. Oh well.

And because it’s like that dude at weddings who sneaks into every shot, here’s the Chapel Bridge one more time, from a vantage point labeled Quintessential Chapel Bridge.

(Click on images for a larger view)

I recently spent two weeks touring around Switzerland with my wife and our one-year-old daughter. It was a magnificent trip — one of those get-it-out-of-my-system-now kinds of trips while Varenna is young and portable. Ha! That’s at least what we thought when we booked the trip in January. She’s a bit more … mobile, shall we say.

But we had a very good time, and ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised with the images I returned home with. In the moment, we both were a bit distracted trying to keep our daughter entertained, engaged, and safe. We worked hard every hour of the trip, just not on photography. Or so it seemed.

Switzerland is a lavishly colorful place. Blessed with ample rain, fertile soil and some of the most chiseled mountains on this planet, it’s hard to take bad images. And if you are the type who comes home with 2,900 images on an external hard drive that need sorting, correcting and categorizing (I am raising my hand as I type this), an unfortunate thing starts to happen. You become numb to emerald green, cobalt blue and buttercup yellow.

Since Tanager Photography started in 2007, I’ve maintained that I am a color photographer. Tanagers are colorful birds, and they travel great distances. But I found myself appreciating a new aesthetic with my Swiss images, and it surprised me — desaturation. It’s nothing revolutionary, and believe me, I’m not acting like I just invented the iPad here. But as I edited my images and adjusted them, I couldn’t help but get excited seeing some of them transform as I moved the saturation slider to the left.

Our trip took us to four distinct places, each with their own photogenic qualities: Lucerne, with its wooden chapel bridge (above right and below); the Berner Oberland with its hulking glacier-clad peaks and lush pastures; Zermatt with the mighty Matterhorn (top); and Zürich, where scores of clock towers seem to suggest that the Swiss are punctual or something.

I’ll devote a later post to where and what to shoot in Lucerne, but its really all about that picturesque wooden bridge with its colorful flower trellises and multi-hued riverfront. I must have shot every conceivable angle on that bridge, but what rounded out the collection wasn’t a fresh angle so much as it was a treatment. By desaturating, the textures of the wood rose to the surface, making my collection of images on the bridge a lot more three dimensional.

The same thing occurred with my images from the Berner Oberland. Here you have the towering, snowy triumvirate of the Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger graced with these verdant green fields — truly one of the most spectacular scenes on earth — and yet, the temptation is to point a wide angle lens on it and turn the saturation up to 11 because that’s how it looks. In hindsight, one of my top pictures from the area was a simple shallow depth of field portrait of a pine-cone decoration hanging on the door of a house in Wengen (second from the top). Easiest shot in the world, and yet, when paired down and drained of its color, it just seemed to complete the other, wide-angle, saturated shots in my collection.

In Zermatt, where the landscape is drier and more harsh, adding a black-and-white treatment here and there seemed to give the land a new interpretation — that of a hostile moonscape covered in ice. I felt that the mountains surrounding Zermatt had been tamed by too much man-made activity (trams, trains, gondolas, cables, roads, girders, pipes, everywhere). Extracting that brutal harshness in the glacial landscape seemed like a nice counterpoint.

Ultimately, what gets me excited about travel photography is the whole collection from a place. Does it tell a story? In Switzerland, that story is buried in the textures of the land, the buildings and the people, and its not so easy to see at first. It wasn’t until I was at home in Denver, working in Lightroom, that I started to see these images come together in a way that was exciting as a whole. It took draining the color from select scenes — an act that defied my style as an artist — to make sense of the Swiss story.

Coming up: mountain porn, waterfalls, tilt-shifting Switzerland and shooters guides to Lucern, Zürich, Zermatt and the Berner Oberland. The Tanager Blog will be a busy place for the next few weeks.

I’d hesitate to say I’m “into gear.” I’d rather read a personal finance blog than the Digital Photography Magazine Buyer’s Guide. In writing, gear is just not interesting.

Where things get interesting for me is when gear enables new techniques. Last year, I used BorrowLenses.com to rent a 200mm prime lens and a 24mm tilt-shift for Holy Week in Mexico. To have two new weapons in my bag made the week’s imagery 100% better. The 200mm allowed for more intimate candid shots during the processions, while the tilt-shift opened up hundreds of doors of creativity for my cityscape and architecture. It was like shooting in a third and fourth dimension.

For Kauai, I once again rented two lenses: this time, a 24mm–105mm zoom lens (a must for the helicopter tour) and a 45mm tilt-shift lens. Once again, the tilt-shift rocked.

Kalihiwai Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 400, 1/2500 sec, f5

Tilt-shift photography is a bit hard to explain, so here’s the Wikipedia page. But in essence, its about manipulation. Tilting manipulates the plane of focus, while shifting reorients the subject in the image area without moving the camera back, thereby eliminating converging lines (handy in architecture imagery). The lens actually moves on the camera body. A knob pivots the lens up and down for tilting, while another knob slides the lens across the front of the camera. A third button rotates the lens on the camera body, so pretty quickly you can get funky.

In Kauai, I was shooting landscapes, and didn’t end up shifting as much as tilting, so all of the images in this post are the product of angling the lens up or down and rotating it on the camera body, and not shifting. I did a brief illustration on the above image to show how tilting alters the plane of focus. On conventional lenses, the focus is related to the distance from the camera (e.g., everything 10 feet away is in focus, while everything closer and further is out of focus). Think of that focused area as a plane. With tilting, that plane is redirected. Suddenly, a swath across the image will be in focus, which in the above image includes my brother Ben and his son Jeremiah some 30 feet away, footprints on the beach 25 feet away, and the surfers bobbing in the distance, some 200 yards away. Meanwhile, the waves 25 feet away, as well as the distant palms trees and nearby footprints, are heavily out of focus. At that moment, I wanted to train the viewers eye to my brother and the surfers at the same time.

Kalihiwai Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 400, 1/3200 sec, f5

Here again I tilted and tried to get the plane of focus to follow the surf line into the distance. I almost nailed it. Because of its nature, shooting with a tilt-shift is all manual focus, so getting it exact is a challenge.

Waimea Canyon; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 200, 1/500 sec, f6.3

Everybody’s favorite effect with the tilt-shift is to “miniaturize” a landscape. By shooting down from a high vantage point and altering the plane of focus, you can make a landscape look like a handcrafted model. My best effort at this is the top image of the Hanalei Valley Lookout, but it also works well here on Waimea Canyon. Again, the key is having an elevated position and tilting down on the scene.

Kalapaki Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 100, 1/1600 sec, f4
Hanalei Valley Taro Fields; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 200, 1/5000 sec, f4

Shooting vertical images with a tilt-shift lens can present its own challenges. I think that’s because I often go vertical when I’m looking up a bit, so as with the sailboat masts on Kalapaki Beach above, or the foreground/mid-ground/background of the taro fields at dusk, executing the right plane of focus can be difficult. Sometimes it works for completely the wrong reasons. The sailboat shot is actually mostly out of focus, but the bow on one boat, the surf and the clumps of palm trees are crisp, giving the shot a surprising intimacy (not what I was going after). On the taro field shot, I should have done a diagonal plane of focus going the other way with the sunbeams. Oh well.

Here are some other experiments:

Palms on Kalapaki Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f4

Wailua Falls; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 400, 1/640 sec, f4
Anini Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 800, 1/320 sec, f7.1

Outrigger Canoe on Kalapaki Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 400, 1/250 sec, f4

Palms on Kalapaki Beach; Canon 45mm TS-E, ISO 100, 1/1600 sec, f4

While on Kauai, Hailey and I took a 90-minute helicopter tour of the island with Jack Harter Helicopters. The tour was billed as a photographer’s tour because it went slower and took its time with each section of the trip. Because of this alone, I highly recommend it. Kauai’s interior and much of its coastline is inaccessible (to most of us) and seeing it by air is really the only way to truly get a sense for the island as a whole.

However, don’t kid yourself. Just because its labeled a “photographer’s tour” doesn’t mean you’ll get great shots. In fact, its very hard work to get semi-pro to professional quality shots from these kinds of tours. I’d even go so far as to say you can’t get professional grade images unless you go on a windowless/doorless flight, and risk getting wet (which you will, when the tour heads to Mount Waialeale, the wettest spot on Earth).

Obviously, my No. 1 reason to do the helicopter tour was to get amazing images of the Garden Isle. We dropped a lot of money, and learned a lot along the way. I figured it was worth it to do a photographer’s scouting report for those of you considering a similar trip. Here are six tips to make the most of it:

1.) Try to minimize switching lenses and bring two cameras if you have to – Jack Harter (and probably all other helicopter tours) don’t allow bags, and once you are on the chopper, its easy to see why. Space is tight, and between the straps, life preservers and headphone cords, a bag would be a tangled-up nightmare. So, without a bag, you have to be judicial with what you take. Your chief camera should have a zoom lens (24mm–105mm is ideal). The second camera can have a longer telephoto range or an experimental lens. I had good luck with a prime 200mm f/2.8 lens, but I’d imagine a 300mm would be too close to be practical. Hailey had the second camera and was trying to rock a 45mm tilt-shift, which was incredibly difficult under the conditions, but when it worked, it was amazing (upper right). Also, keep in mind that things happen fast on these tours (and I was on the 90-minute flight), so always stay one step ahead of the pilot in terms of what’s coming up and be prepared to have the right settings ahead of time. The last thing you’d want is to see Weeping Wall, frame the shot, and decide to switch lenses for a better focal length. The view will be gone by the time you’re set.

2.) Don’t fight glare. You can’t win. Just enjoy the views for a moment – Unless your tour is windowless, glare is inevitable, and can be frustrating if you let it bother you (see two examples above … and for the record, that is not a butt crack). They tell passengers on this tour to wear dark clothing to minimize glare, but that didn’t help us: our pilot wore shorts and his thighs were the leading contributors to glare from our angle. My advice? If the glare is bad, put the camera down and just enjoy the moment. You can’t fight it, but you can quickly fail to register just how spectacular that waterfall on the other side of pilot’s thigh-glare is.

3.) Be prepared for any seat in the house – The tour company will seat you specifically based on weigh distribution on the helicopter, so calling shotgun will do you no good. I was seated in the back row middle, which I thought would be the worst seat in the helicopter. It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t horrible. I had good luck with the long lenses (24mm–105mm and my 200mm prime) from this spot, but glare was exaggerated from here, especially at wider than 50mm. Hailey was on the left side, back seat, and had less glare, but a whole different problem: the warped glass. Front center and front right would have probably been the best seats for shooting, but they also may have had significant glare. Hard to tell without sitting in that spot.

4.) Best light for the Na Pali Coast is evening light – Our departure was at 9:30am, and by 10:15am we were circling over the highlight of Kauai, the Na Pali Coast. Problem was, we were looking back into the light, which would have been fine if I could maneuver to harness the light. But buckled in, and with lots of glare out the right side of the helicopter, it was difficult to compose shots without major drawbacks. My point is this: it may be worth taking the risk to fly in the afternoon. The weather may set in, the crater may be extra cloudy and wet … heck, the flight might even be cancelled. But if you get sunny conditions in the late afternoon, the Na Pali would be a freaking photographic jackpot. Your call.

5.) Be prepared for darker conditions in the craters and inland valleys – This caught up with me at the Weeping Wall (above right) at the end of the tour, the one cloudy spot we encountered on our extraordinarily sunny trip. After firing a few frames, I realized my shutter speed was teetering around 1/60 second, way too slow to be shooting from a moving vehicle. Sure enough, a lot of the images from inland were throw-aways. It’s easy to just keep the camera on one setting the whole trip and forget about it, but the waterfalls of the interior are one of the most stellar sights on Earth. Best not to miss a shot of them because of complacency.

6.) Embrace post-production – While initially flipping through the 449 images we took while airborne, I had a bit of a sinking feeling. It didn’t appear I had much to show for my efforts. But back home, and after loading everything into Lightroom, it became clear I had a lot of good images. Most of this was just contrast adjustment, some of it was just cloning out a minor glare here and there. Nothing too technical, and nothing that altered the reality of what we saw. In the end, I’m just glad I kept shooting.

To end the trip with fresh peaches, or to end the trip with hot springs? That was the question.

And an easy question at that. For 10 years now, I’ve been wanting to take my wife to Colorado’s best hot springs: The Springs Inn in Pagosa Springs. The only issue was its distance from Denver. A full six-hour drive. Hey, let’s do it together for the first time with a five-month-old, right?

In truth, it would be right on the way back from Mesa Verde, and rather than do the entire circuit in reverse (start in Pagosa, move to Mesa Verde, up to Telluride, back home through Palisade) we thought a long soak would be the proper conclusion to this road trip.

Amazingly, nothing is close in this part of the state — at least by Denverites-with-an-infant standards. From Mesa Verde National Park it was two hours to Durango, and because of construction, another two hours to Pagosa. By the time we rolled into the Springs Inn, checked into our room, and changed into our suits, we were dying for some sulfur-mineral-water therapy.

Yes, that’s right: I said sulfur. These springs are delightfully stinky.

But as Hailey quickly found out (I’ve been a defender of sulfur for years because of this place), the big stink about the stink is simply overblown. For one, I think the smell has toned down over the years. Secondly, the high mineral content feels exceptional on the skin and has healing properties (and that’s not B.S. — I had a long skin ailment years ago that wouldn’t go away until I visited these springs. It’s been gone ever since).

Six hours of tackling the hot springs in shifts was just what we needed, though it would have been nice to soak in the pools together after dark a bit more (ya know, little girl’s bedtime, someone’s got to babysit, etc.).

We’d need as much tension reduction as possible, because the next day was brutal. The six-hour drive took nine because of all the breaks Varenna required. The road trip had finally got to her, and her car seat had become her mortal enemy. But we rolled into Denver seven days, five peaches, four tanks of gas, one breakdown and 51 diapers later. It had been a remarkable trip, and as we found out, Southwest Colorado has remained the most remarkable part of Colorado.

Mesa Verde National Park has long been on my list. Located near the Four Corners and home to an extensive network of abandoned dwellings from the Ancestral Puebloan Indians, it is a magical place I should know well. After all, it is in Colorado and its an UNESCO World Heritage site (so is Macchu Piccu, the Roman Coliseum, and the Pyramids of Egypt).

But time and distance had conspired in my head to keep me from going. Why? It is 8 hours by car from Denver … so is Billings, Montana.

I last visited when I was two years old. Naturally, that shouldn’t count as “having been there.” However, one of the earliest memories of my life is from when we went into the kiva at Cedar Tree House (below). I think it stands out to me because we descended a ladder into a hole in the ground. That’s got to mess with your head when your that young.

So we arrived at Mesa Verde after another long afternoon in the car. Varenna had slept for much of the uneventful journey, but by the time we weaved through the emerald gambel-oak forest that covers the mesa just inside the park entrance, she was kicking and screaming. Emotionally, I kept feeling like we were being selfish for going on this trip, but the wonderful thing about six-month-olds is how short their memory is. One stop, one good break to roll around on a blanket, and everything is right with the world again.

After checking into the underwhelming Far View Lodge (run by ARAMARK, a hospitality company that only works where it has no competition: like stadiums, national parks, college campuses, etc., explaining why the standards for food and bedding are so low), we gently buckled Varenna back up and drove 20 minutes south to see the only dwelling we could reach before sundown — Cedar Tree House (left in second photos above), considered the best preserved dwelling, and home to the reconstructed kiva that you can climb down into.

By the time we reached it, however, it was closed for the day, gated off across the grotto, with a phalanx of 50 to 60 vultures watching vigil over it from the trees above. It appeared that a forest fire had at one point reached the top of the dwelling and been beaten back. The sky burst into lavendar and pink, and an eerie silence permeated the whole scene. No wonder the Ute Indians didn’t like this mesa after it was abandoned. There was definitely a haunted vibe. The only sign of life came from a family of turkeys on the rocks above the dwelling who humorously chased the vultures.

The next day, we traveled to Wetherill Mesa, which practically comprises half the park but only sees 20% of the park’s visitors. There we took a hiking tour to Long House with a nasally, patronizing guide who — despite her smarter-than-you tone — provided an impressive amount of information on the Ancestral Puebloan Indians, their way of life, and their subsequent disappearance from the mesa. Long House was especially fascinating because of the seep spring at the back of the dwelling, which filled cups chipped into the stone drip-by-drip (above right). How they were able to keep the entire population of the dwelling hydrated off this meager faucet is mystifying, amazing and admirable.

There was also an amazing structure hanging above the dwelling (below), apparently reserved for food storage.

Taking photos on a guided tour can be a little awkward (“uh-huh, uh-huh <click> … I’m listening <click>”) but its the only way to gain access to the dwellings, and for good reason. They would certainly get trashed (accidentally by the klutzy and intentionally by the greedy) if they weren’t heavily policed and patrolled. Even backing up to frame a shot, I had to be careful not to bump into an ancient brick wall.

Maybe if you gave tours to people like me, you’d take on a patronizing tone over time.

We were in Snowmass so I could attend the Colorado Governor’s Conference on Tourism. I spent much of the time in conference rooms, banquets and exhibit halls, while Hailey and Varenna got to explore. By Friday, however, I was liberated from the indoors and allowed a few hours to see Maroon Bells (above), the most famous mountains in Colorado, if not North America. They were stunning.

More to come … but first I’d like to plow through the rest of Telluride, Mesa Verde and Pagosa Springs.

And for the record, after these past three months, I am more in love with Colorado than ever before.

There is something to be said for living in a fantasy world. Check that: there is something to be said for visiting a fantasy world … for a few days.

Telluride defies description — at least one without hyperbole. Such as “the prettiest town in the United States.” (OK, there. I said it.) But for all of its majestic grandeur and quaint homeliness, it is a not a place that one would call “down-to-earth,” “approachable,” or “realistic.” We toured an open house — a 2500-square-foot Victorian two blocks off main — that was going for $3.2 million. I witnessed a morning rush hour on quiet little Lizard Head Pass that consisted of commuters driving in from Rico (28 miles south), and maybe even Dolores (67 miles south) — all flocking to this enchanting little town to work in the wine bars, day spas and five-star hotels. How this community functions is a bit of a mystery, but it does function. It functions magnificently. I want to go back. I’d put it on top of my U.S. destination list all over again.

And incredibly, in late August, it wasn’t too steep. We stayed at the New Sheridan Hotel on Main Street (that’s Varenna in our room, above) for less than $175. In the middle of winter, that would go for about $335. We ate a superb dinner, one of the best meals of the year, at 221 South Oak Restaurant for the same price as pretty much any nice sit-down restaurant in Denver. Hey: we were on vacation. Why not? And when you consider the crappy room we paid more for in Mesa Verde (not to mention the regrettable $13 “Navajo taco” Aramark doled out there), Telluride seemed like — gasp! — a great value.

Still, this thought about people actually living there would not leave my head. Maybe it was because the night before, while eating dinner in an empty dining room at the Chipeta Sun Lodge, I told Hailey I could retire to Ridgway. It is gorgeous there as well, but it also felt cozy, livable, and … realistic. Telluride? It just didn’t add up how you could get to a point in your life where that was attainable.

But ask me now what the highlight of our late-summer trip was, and I wouldn’t hesitate. It was this place. I’m a sucker for massive mountains, waterfalls spouting off in every direction, lush greenery everywhere you go. I like my scenery without subtly, and if I can have a medium-rare elk chop with asparagus and lingonberries for dinner beneath that landscape? Sold.

(Hello, I’m a great big panorama … click on me for larger version)

Night one concluded with an amazing scene on Main Street. A full moon rising over the San Juan’s at the end of the valley. It was one of those stirring scenes you can’t turn away from. They happen all the time in Colorado, but this one was especially gripping. I stood out in the middle of the street with my camera on a tripod, firing off exposures trying to get it just right. Trying to put in perspective the magnificent beauty of these mountains … until a drunk stumbled out of the New Sheridan and asked me for a good burger.

Like I said … it’s nice visiting a fantasy world for a few days.

(Click on images for larger version … especially this shot)

Falling a bit behind in updating the blog from our Southwest Colorado trip. Things take priority sometimes: you know, like a full-time job and life with a six-month old. Funny how every spare moment — mornings, nights, weekends — I want to spend with her. Just finished getting her down for bed and now I’ll be off on a business trip for three days. So it goes.

But odds are, I’ll have regular updates through the end of the year with this trip, next week’s trips to Steamboat Springs and Snowmass, and then our mid-November journey to Kauai. Good to have new material, for sure.

On the Sunday morning of our trip, I awoke at dawn … groggy, gross and overheated. The hot evening and sleeping on the ground had left me feeling less than ideal. Now would have been a great time for coffee (or a bucket of ice to dunk my head in), but again, we weren’t too adept at this camping thing, so we didn’t have any way to make coffee. We brought breakfast: 12 crummy Target cereal bars. That was it. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Varenna, however, was her usual spry self. Kids can sleep anywhere. In the future, we’ll camp because of her, not because of us. It won’t be because we thoroughly enjoy it (just being honest: after all, this was the first time we’d camped since we got engaged) or because we love making cowboy coffee over a fireplace. We’ll camp to experience her reaction to it. And that’s assuming she’ll love it (after seeing how she is in the outdoors, I’m fairly certain she will). And then as a result, we will love camping.

We set out along Rim Rock Drive around 7am, catching some of the most brilliant golden light I’ve seen in Colorado.

We experimented with lens flares, shooting into the sun, and comparing the way the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 40D handled the light. In fact, in some instances, the same shot came out better on the Canon 40D (I have no idea why).

By 8:30am we were back at the campground packing up. Onward through the rest of the park along Rim Rock Drive, a stop for brunch in Grand Junction, and then a two-hour drive to Ridgway at the foot of the San Juan Mountains. The drive was uneventful through the monument, but twice we heard a weird knocking sound — once pulling into a turnout and again on a steep switchback. Both times while turning. We didn’t think anything of it.

But a mile outside Delta, Colorado — at a speed of 65 mph — it occurred again and there was no way to ignore it. A bang followed by a high, straining whir of the engine. I began to slow down significantly, and noticed the steering wheel was like lead. It took about a quarter mile to stop in the shoulder, but I got it there in one piece. Varenna slept through the whole thing.

Was it a blowout? Nope. A quick walk around the vehicle disproved that theory. When I restarted the car, the transmission light, the oil light, the check engine light and the parking brake light were all on (even though the parking brake wasn’t engaged). That helps.

Long story short, it was the power-steering belt. It flew off because the mechanics who replaced it the week before forgot to clamp it down. For the entire drive from Denver down I-70, up Rim Rock Drive, around Colorado National Monument (alone) in the dead of night under a full moon, this belt spun and somehow didn’t fly off. Fortunately, it didn’t destroy anything else in the engine when it came off, and after a tow to Montrose and a drop off at the airport, the three of us were in a rental car headed to Ridgway to salvage our itinerary. We arrived in one piece at the Chipeta Sun Lodge, the perfect place to chill out after such an episode.

By Monday morning, the belt was replaced, and by noon we’d retrieved the car and were headed to Ouray and then Telluride. Vacation saved.