BOYS TRIP - SOUTHERN UTAH

May 2023 my wife and daughter went for a girl's trip so while the girls are away, the boys will play.

Me, my sons, and my nephew headed to southern Utah for a long weekend getaway camping in the red rocks and barren badlands of Southern Utah.

We started the trip on Thursday after my boys were out of school and we drove 4 1/2 hours to the popular Moon Overlook, but we couldn't help but make some stops to take photos of the golden light along the way.

My nephew learning his new camera

We arrived at the primitive campsite around 10pm, and while I expected a few other vehicles, I did not expect there to be so many people. There was at least 25 vehicles at the campsite, all vans or 4Runners with roof top tents. Then there was us peasants sleeping in tents.
We ate some late night snacks then headed to the overlook about 50 yards from the car, in the dark, to start capturing the rising milky way. I expected there to be a lot more people at the overlook photographing the stars but there was only one and he setup a timelapse then went to bed. Since we had it all to ourselves I pulled out my flash and snoot to capture me standing on the spire with darkness all around.

milky way rising

full arch selfie

just me and the milky way

After shooting around for an hour or so we went to bed because sunrise came really early.

While we had the overlook to ourselves for the milky way, sunrise was a very different story. We were awakened by the shutting of car doors, drones buzzing and not so quiet conversations of other photographers scouting out there compositions. At one point I counted 4 drones in the air. Mine would have made it 5 except I left the SD card at home in the card reader and didn't have a spare micro SD.

Several people took turns walking out to the platform, some more skiddish than others. I had no problem walking out during the day since I had done it at night in the dark.

Here's what you're looking at from the overlook, the barren badlands of Southern Utah. Quite the contrast of the well known red rocks.

Here's some photos around Factory Butte

We enjoyed breakfast at the overlook just taking in the simple beauty of the landscape in solitude because once the sun came up the crowd scattered like roaches. They'd gotten their content for the gram and were on to the next influencer spot to keep their stories buzzing for the IG monster.

We had a jam packed day ourselves though since we only had a few days. We started off heading down a long dirt road to try and find the famous Bentonite Hills that look like red and white striped gumdrops. I did steal the SD card out of son's phone and was able to get some video of this area and honestly it was very underwhelming. I think it was because we were there in the late morning and the light wasn't ideal, blue hour would be the time to visit.

Then we headed into Capital Reef National Park for a short hike in a slot canyon (I didn't take many photos, sorry), then we went to the visitor center for the famous berry pie, but they ran out like an hour before so we decided to head out and do the Cathedral Valley Loop and hit the Temple of the Sun for sunset and some milky way. We came in from the West and you get into some pretty high elevations, which still happened to have snow and we got to a point where the snow covered the road so much that it was impassable. Bugger! We had to drive back an hour the way we came to get around to Temple of the Sun. Now we were racing the setting sun and a pretty good rainstorm.

We made in just in time to eat a quick dinner and capture some awesome storm clouds over Temple of the Sun.

Since we had heavy clouds, there wasn't much chance for milky way photos but I left my camera out on a timelapse and we drove out the park boundaries (no primitive camping in the national park) and slept in the car for the night. It was the worst night of attempted sleep ever. We were too tired to throw out our tents so we thought we'd just sleep in the car. Worst. Mistake. Ever. 4 guys in a Toyota Highlander just doesn't work out. The sunrise the next morning turned out ok though.