The western weather has proved to be less congenial this past week, requiring a few gyrations in my plans. I left Santa Fe last Friday as the snow flurries stopped and traveled on to Chaco Canyon. The 20+ mile dirt road off highway 550 was not fit for 2WD (stuck cars with broken axles) but I avoided misadventure and spent both an evening and the following morning exploring the ruins of Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl completely alone with the spirits in these largest of the Ancestral Puebloan ruins of the Southwest. My first and only prior trip to Chaco was 30 years ago and the place retains all the spiritual power I felt at that time.

At Mesa Verde late that afternoon my plans to XC ski a loop around the ruins the next day were foiled as they were closing the trails to prep them for the spring season. I left Mesa Verde Saturday afternoon, making a long late evening drive to Arches National Park in Utah. I was the park before sunrise to photograph places I knew to be far away from a crowd of other photographers. Since leaving Santa Fe I had the benefit of chilly sunshine each day but the afternoon forecast called for rain or snow across most of Southeast Utah. I headed from Arches for 8000′ elevation Bryce Canyon, figuring I’d rather be in snow than rain, taking the slow scenic path down routes 24 and 12, passing through both Capitol Reef and Escalante-Grand Staircase National Parks. Climbing in altitude, crossing two passes, moving through rain and into snow, I arrived at Bryce at dusk. Bryce had a small park campground with an open spot, so I camped legally instead of my usual truck stop or outlaw camping and was perfectly warm and comfortable in my Tacoma pickup despite the sub-20 degree temperature.

Up before sunrise on Monday, snow falling heavy at times, I found the entire Bryce plateau with its amphitheaters of hoodoos completely veiled by heavy fog and snow. As I waited and hoped for clearing, conditions worsened so I headed for Zion National Park, two hours away, where I found dramatic skies but crowds and more rain in the forecast. I wanted somewhere warmer and less rainy, so Death Valley seemed a good bet, and I needed to loop south that direction around the Sierras to head up the San Joaquin Valley towards San Francisco anyway.

En route to Death Valley, I stopped in Las Vegas for gas and found that NOAA was forecasting a sandstorm in Death Valley for tomorrow. Not only that my other options like Sequoia National Park and Yosemite were either closed or required tire chains, and my tire chains were several hundred miles away in Erin’s 4Runner in Berkeley. What to do? Just keep going and head for Point Reyes National Seashore on the California coast just north of San Francisco. It was 9 hours distant, but along the way I spent the night near Tehachipi Pass so that I could cross another of the locales in ‘Willin”‘ off my list.

I have only the best memories of prior trips to Point Reyes- whether with all my family, with Erin or solo. I know enough about its light and topography to feel comfortable there in any weather, and its hills, coasts, forests and estuaries always present me with new possibilities. It doesn’t have its own campground but, as you might surmise, that is not a major obstacle for me. Over two and a half days I made photographs, watched the birds and listened to the otherworldly calls of the mating elephant seals. This sunrise photograph of the clouds is from Limantour Beach, perfectly smoothed by the overnight tide and completely deserted except for the birds and me.