Valley of Dreams

The other remote area near the Bisti Badlands on my agenda was the Valley of Dreams (VOD), which reportedly had many interesting rock formations. However, I had to first drive out from the King of Wings's remote parking spot... I now found the narrow dirt track's wet clay to be nearly impassable. I only then realized that I had earlier driven in on clay that was largely frozen from the previous night, and in the intervening 2 hours had thawed out. Now Starr was becoming totally bogged down at times, with his wheels encased with inches of power-sucking clay. So, frequently I had to backup a few feet in the newly formed ruts/tracks and thereby get a little more speed going forward through an especially bad, untracked section. It wasn't at all clear whether this would always work, but it did...whew!

I then carefully negotiated a few miles of treacherous driving on very small Navajo ranch roads until I reached the reported VOD access spot. As I surveyed the nearly mile long, unmarked hike into the VOD's distant badlands, a Navajo ranch pickup drove by, leading a large SUV that appeared to be full of tourists. A few minutes later I saw them pull into an area about halfway between my location and the valley. Clearly the Navajo guide had lead them to a closer access point, which would greatly shorten a hike that promised to be at least as difficult as my earlier KOW hike! So I carefully followed their tire tracks to the closer parking spot and found 8 Chinese photographers/tourists slip-sliding their way to amazing rock formations in the distance. And I joined them for a fantastic couple of hours of shooting (albeit very taxing in the slippery, sticky clay).

After last light, I negotiated my way back to Starr by headlamp and I watched the Chinese individually return as I ate my dinner. Rather then load up and leave, they milled around, speaking in animated Chinese. I then realized that they were missing one of their colleagues. For the next hour I watched the spots of their headlamps return to the distant VOD and fan out in an obvious search pattern. Their search appeared unsuccessful as they again individually returned and started loading into their SUV. Suddenly one of them exclaimed and pointed to a distant spot of light, much farther than where we all had been earlier. Many minutes later an exhausted woman stumbled into the SUV and they quickly departed.

After a good night's sleep, I headed out in the cold (18°F) predawn darkness and had a wonderful morning again shooting VOD. The now frozen wet clay was a joy to walk on. And, although I would have loved to stay and shoot another evening in this absolutely amazing location, the thought of doing so in thawed wet clay caused me to instead depart and continue my journey north...

Panoramas – Tap/click on a pano's thumbnail to show an interactive, moving panorama; use the on-screen control bar or your finger/mouse to move around:

Valley of Dreams Early Morning:

Valley of Dreams Full Panorama:

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