All photos in this series were taken in September 2005, along National Park Service Road 230, a well-maintained dirt/gravel track leading from Big Water, Utah into the odd, empty wildness of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The first 15 miles or so of the road are very manageable. After that, you need four-wheel drive and some nerve. I’d been out here a couple times before, but never when the lighting was so fine. It’s still a strange, lunar-looking place, but the sun definitely made it more cheery.