overland: utah
september 2021 · utah
shot on nikon d850 · dji mavic air 2s
The idea was a few nights in the desert, camped close enough to the good spots that sunrise didn’t mean a pre-dawn drive. The first morning still did: we left Colorado in the dead of night to catch first light above the canyons around Moab, then dropped into Island in the Sky down the Shafer Trail, a road that had been closed every time I’d tried it before. It did not disappoint, and parts of it are sketchy for sure.
This was my first real trip with a drone, and seeing this landscape from above took over everything. I barely touched my camera, and I wasn’t shooting film yet.
From there we headed toward Hanksville: Little Wild Horse, a slot canyon outside Goblin Valley, then sunset on the bentonite hills everyone calls Mars, and camp near Factory Butte so we could wake up on the moon. We had sunrise entirely to ourselves.
Then the desert changed the plan. A massive mudslide the week before had closed the back roads to Cathedral Valley, and the soft clay made the rest impassable, so I flew the drone from the road instead. We audibled to Leprechaun Canyon, slept on a slab of sand outside Goblin, flew one more morning, and drove home already planning the return.