Spring 2024 Southwestern Swing, 4.01.24 - 5.06.24, Part 10, The Toadstool Hoodoos
Of the times I had been to southern Utah and northern Arizona, I had somehow managed to have never been to Page, Arizona or Kanab, Utah. It’s not like I wasn’t familiar with them. I have pored over maps and done massive research on the seemingly endless amount of things to do in that general area. But knowledge on paper and actual experiences are two very different things. On this trip I plotted a course to see both cities. I knew it would be an impossible task to see everything and in truth, the hardest part of trip planning is deciding what NOT to see. But I also knew we could accomplish quite a bit so I allotted five nights for Page and six nights for Kanab. I’m sure one could spend literally a lifetime in either one of those places and never get bored but this would at least give us enough time to get a good sampling of what these two legendary areas had to offer.
The morning after our sunset shoot at Shiprock, I opted out of driving down there for sunrise. I was quite pleased with our sunset shoot the previous evening so I settled for watching the sunrise on Shiprock through my binoculars from right outside the Navibahn in the parking lot of the Flowing Water Casino.
It took a little over three hours to drive to the Page Lake Powell Campground which was very close to the downtown area and several spots we intended to visit. Along the way we drove through Kayenta which had beautiful scenery surrounding the city. We arrived in Page, Arizona before noon and settled in to our site. Bridgit did some laundry and we chilled for a few hours by design. This was the warmest weather we had experienced on our trip so far. It was in the upper eighties and it felt great!
Our plan for our first evening in Page was something I had been studying and calculating for a long time. When planning these big trips I pay close attention not just to know the sunrise and sunset times, but also the moon phases. In Page and Kanab, which are both extremely close to their state borders, this process is complicated by the fact that Arizona does not recognize daylight savings time. Over the course of the next eleven days we would drive back and forth between Utah and Arizona, sometimes multiple times per day. This made it much more difficult for me to calculate departure times. Anyway, this first night was going to be a full moon and I had a vision of how to use that to make a fantastic photo.
Bridgit and I packed a picnic dinner and at 4PM Arizona time (which was 5PM Utah time), we drove the Jeep into Utah along 89 about a half hour out of Page to the Toadstool Hoodoos trailhead. It was exciting driving past so many places I’d only read about like the Glen Canyon Dam, Lakeshore Drive and Wahweap Overlook.
There were about six or seven vehicles in the parking lot when we arrived, but most of them were hiking out as we hiked in. The trail is only .9 miles one way to get to the Toadstools. It basically follows a wash and then climbs easily up onto a shelf. Once on the shelf, there is a very prominent reddish brown toadstool that is considered the main feature of the hike. I took a few photos here but there were still a few people hanging out on the rocks. We still had plenty of time until sunset so I went for a little exploratory walk.
The main toadstool rock grouping
From the main toadstool, I walked along the shelf to the west, through a gap in the rocks and rounded a corner to find a really cool area. First, it was near the far rim of the shelf and I could look down into a beautiful valley below me. This area is called the Rimrocks. Further around the corner I found a little rock cove surrounded by a huge golden wall of rock. At the base of this cove were four yellow hoodoos with brown caps. Back by the Rimrocks was an area of wind and rain carved white mounds with walls of red rock above. It was all pretty nice. I would bet not even a tenth of the people that visit the Toadstools ever bother to get to this part of the shelf. Most just get their selfie at the main toadstool and call it a day.
The Rimrock Hoodoos
The Golden Wall
The contrast between the white and red rock was outstanding
The Carved Mounds
Back by the main toadstool group there were several other toadstools scattered along the shelf. On the back of the big cliffs behind the shelf were several large deep cut alcoves. I went inside one and from the back of the wall inside it was almost a cave and felt a lot like some of the cool features at Cathedral Gorge in Nevada.
Early evening light on more toadstools
The Giant Alcove
By now it was almost sunset. A young woman, maybe in her early twenties was taking pictures. Her name was Lauren and her dog’s name was Denver. It was her very first day ever in Utah. Bridgit and I got to talking with her. She was just seeing the world in her little car that she had taken out the back seat and converted the space into a place to sleep. I asked her if she was staying for the moonrise and she wasn’t even aware it would be a full moon but decided to stick around. By now the three of us were the only ones left up on the shelf.
I explained my vision to Lauren. The sun would set at precisely 8:10PM. The full moon would rise at 8:15PM. Months earlier back at home using my Photopills app, I had calculated where the moon would rise over the horizon. Now, on the shelf by the main toadstool, I used the night augmented reality feature of the app to see the arc of the moonrise. It was still too early but on the app I could see where the moon was below the horizon. By following the arc as it rose, I positioned my tripod in the spot where as the moon appeared on the horizon it would rise right next to the main toadstool. I also knew that I had to be far enough away so that I could utilize the full zoom of my 300mm lens to make the moon appear as large as possible while still having the full image of the toadstool in the foreground. So now we both had our tripods out and just as I envisioned it, a giant full moon came up exactly where I predicted it would be. And then it all fell apart.
I tried all sorts of settings on my camera to capture this image. It seemed that no matter what I tried, If I composed on the toadstool, the moon was just a white, washed out circle. If I composed on the bright full moon, the rest of the photo was so dark I couldn’t even see the toadstool. It just wasn’t happening for me. I got a couple of shots, but nothing like I had hoped for. Back to the drawing board!
Just before sunset light
The Big Toadstool
Last rays of the day
Full moon rising
After Lauren and I shot dozens and dozens of shots, we finally threw in the towel and gave up. Before leaving, I thought I would wander around the other side of the main toadstool to see if I could get a nice shot of the Toadstool lit up by the moon but the angle wasn’t good on the east side of the rocks. Then Bridgit and I decided to try one last fun thing.
For this trip I had bought a new LED flashlight for light painting that had four different colors. We set up my tripod a little way away from the toadstool. Bridgit “painted” the toadstool with the flashlight for about ten seconds while I shot about a thirty second exposure. I’m sure we could have ended up with some really cool shots if we had stayed longer and played around with it, but by now it was about ten-thirty so we figured we should get Lauren back to her car. She hadn’t planned to stay this late and didn’t have a flashlight so we wanted to hike her down with us.
Light painted toadstool with an overexposed moon
We all chatted the whole way back to the trailhead. She asked about how we traveled and the type of stuff we enjoy in the outdoors, you know, RVing, Jeeping, camping, hiking, etc… When we were back at the trailhead Bridgit asked her one final question. She said, “Well what are your plans after your road trip? What do you want to be when you grow up?” Without hesitation, she looked right at us and said, “You guys”. That might be the sweetest compliment we have ever received in our lives.