Once again, I hope you can tell this isn’t Austin

When I began showing pictures from a trip to the Texas Panhandle in April, I entitled the first post “I hope you can tell this isn’t Austin.” Now it’s not even Texas. No, I photographed these sandstone formations along US 160 in northern Arizona on September 27th, about a third of the way into a 3300-mile trip that began with an overnight stay with our friends in Lubbock and went on to include three nights in Albuquerque, two in Durango, and three apiece in Phoenix and Tucson. Of course it was the days between those nights that most interested me because then I was free to do my photographic thing—or actually things, lots of them.

When we returned to Austin on October 4th I found the place in full fall mode botanically (though not in terms of climate, because afternoon temperatures stayed stuck in the low 90s for the next seven days). I’ve already giddily (and alas allergenically and chiggerly and fire-ant-ily) charged back in to local nature photography. I’d like to post some of those central Texas pictures before they get too dated, so beginning today I’ll show perhaps a dozen trip pictures and then mix more-recent images from Austin’s autumn into the continuing selection from the Great American West. I hope you won’t get see-sick later this month from looking at photographs that bounce back and forth between the two realms, but variety is the spice (and in this blog the species) of life.

Bouncing back to the picture in today’s post, let me add that I had trouble getting the views I wanted because not only was the land fenced off, but also electric wires and poles cut across the site in several places. I zoomed and angled my way past the obstacles the best I could.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman