Raising the Deardorff from the dead.

  Looked like the first thing was to replace the ground glass.  There's a nice Youtube Video, just had to order the stuff.

The stuff.

Followed the video.  Had four pieces of glass cut.  I ground for an hour each.  Replaced the grinding compound several times.  Used a cardboard base.  Each piece got one hour and ten minutes of grinding, plus the grind-er got three hours and 30 minutes.  They all looked the same and all fit and worked as well as the original.  Looks like after an hour's grinding, nothing changes.  They can't be judged wet.  When they are dry you can see what's going on.

  I had a spare I had carried for 25 years in various vehicles.  When I opened up the protective packaging.... IT was shattered.  Now I have a spare for a spare.  Plus another spare.

  Turns out the back springs are sprung and the wood that is missing is important.  Plus I broke a corner mounting pin off.  Looks like its time for a new 5X7 back.  I can have one made....for the price of a used 5X7 Deardorff.  Currently beating the bushes.

  All 4X5 Deardorff Specials come with a 4X5 and 5X7 back.  Seems like there would be a few spare 5X7 backs floating around, since that format is used less.  It's a scavenger hunt.

  But grinding the glass was kinda fun.

Summer starts in the Blackfork Watershed

  We get back.  I'm slightly busted.   No business going, because I'm moving a darkroom and have a quick show deadline looming)  Before I left I'd finished printing a show for Foto Relevance in Houston.  Then I packed up and moved out of the darkroom at Tyler Junior College.  I'd been using it for several years and had printed two big museum shows there, plus this one.  Moving out is an 8X10 enlarger and two 5X7 enlargers.  Sink.  Negative files, plus, plus, plus.  All that stuff piled at Lindsey Lane.  New darkroom will be built there.

  I had the prints.  I ordered the mats.  I ordered the plex.  I had made the frames.  Now it was time to put it all together.  The mats were sloppy- (very rare from my supplier.)  300 bucks worth of  plex was 1/4 inch off.  Crazy, though that's modern life.  Every photo project has a disaster built into it.  You might as well just anticipate it's arrival with gladness.  More plex.  More mats.

  Two days of stretching and pulling got my Moab rib really singing.

  Thirteen nice big 20X24 paper prints in nice frames.  

  Then I drove them 200 miles to Houston on Monday, the 11th.  And drove home.

Stacked along the gallery wall, safe and sound!  Nice little announcement card!

Moab Solstice Snake.

  Don't go there.  It's terrible.  You'll get lost.  Its a 10 mile round trip.  I saw a real rattle snake nearly too late.  The route-finding is very sporty and if you make even the slightest mistake you'll wander in the heat.  There's quite a bit of climbing.  Cactus.  Spiny stuff.  Loose rocks.  All that said...

A friend of mine arranged a ride for about half the distance.  It's really not a road or even a trail.  I wouldn't take a horse or llama in there, much less walk it.  I watched KL drive in and though I saw it with my own eyes, I didn't believe it.  Then we parked and started picking along through broken-block, gnarly, block-tipping, ascending landscape.  Makes the ruggedest parts of Yosemite look like a play school playground.

  But, through luck and lots of research and study of maps, videos, accounts, terrain, et...there we were.

There are few things in MOMA or the Louvre this good.  It's a stomp-down astounding holy thing.

We had decent light, being there fairly early.

  Shot four pieces of film.  Then fell off a rock into a boulder field below.  A little too casual.  Gashed my head, which was pretty scenic, but really nothing, but also broke a rib.  Could have been much, much worse.  Saddled up my gear and out we went.  Deardorff took a beating.  Lost some wood.  Ground glass shattered.  120 Super Angulon took a fatal glass strike.

Happy to be shaken but not stirred.  End of photography for the trip.  I had plenty of other lenses and a spare ground glass, but turned out IT was broken in the pocket of the car.  I'd carried it around for years.  We headed home one day early.

Crossing snakes in Moab.

  It's a terrific drive from Bluff to Moab.  Good pavement, new things to see.  The rocks put on a fairly terrific show.  Moab is like Six Flags over Red Rocks.  It's in an astounding setting.

  I'd located a 22 hump snake that is just near the entrance to Sand Flat recreation area.  The only problem was, in the last year or so someone had shot it up.  Unbelievable in this day and age, but there it was.  A genuine atrocity.  Someone should be hanged in the public square.

The light was afternoon sunlit awful, and the heat beginning to get focused, but its an easy access.  Needs to be seen in the morning, but I shot  some film.

  Has to be a solstice/equinox marker.  Lines up via compass with a bigger snake that is a June Solstice marker.  There's a little slab on the South side that ought to handle the shadow very well.  Vandalized.  

There's the slab to the South with a little faint ascending snake rising along the dark stain line.  This was an important site.  They shot up the little snake as well.  I'd love to meet them and hear an explanation.

Little snake is ascending at bottom bullet holes.  

The Blue Door Band.

  If you have read "Eating Stone" by Ellen Meloy, you know who the Blue Door Band of Desert Bighorns are.  Last year I had camped in or near the band's territory on the Sand Juan between Bluff and Mexican Hat.  Cindy and I drove out to spend the night at that same point.  Last year with my binocs I could see sheep trails below, but never saw one.  This year about 30 seconds of looking and I realized I was seeing four rams bedded down behind the vegetation fringe along the river below.

There eight in the group.

That morning after breakfast at Recapture we had walked out to the Meloy Memorial on the river.  This sculpture is inspired by a sketch she made of Bighorn petroglyph.  I'd love to see that glyph.  There is also a newer memorial to Katie Lee down near the river bank.

Just out of Bluff we stopped so I could hike closer to a couple of wall shapes to the North of the highway on the edge of town.  It was an easy hike, but all ascending.  Shot a couple pieces of film.

We hit the Goosenecks, and went up and down the Moki Dugway.  Just touring and killing time before heading to the San Juan.

Dried deer draped over fence with Raven leaving.  Near the bottom of the Dugway.  We ranged as far West as Gouldings in Monument Valley.  Ate lunch at Mexican Hat on the river.  Went out to see the volcano neck South of town.  Just killing time.  Finally got late enough in the afternoon to head to the campsite over the San Juan.

Cindy watching the Ram Band bed down in the evening.

They were just along the vegetation band along the river.  Didn't seem very wary.  Must not be any big cats in the area.  They ranged around in prime ambush country.

Next morning I looked at some shadows.

Last time this year to wear fleece....until October.

Slept in the van.  Cindy got up to watch falling stars.  I got up with the spotting scope to check the Rings of Saturn.  We had a Ring-tailed Cat go after the grocery box.  Typical night in the desert.  Nobody in sight or sound at this very remote mesa tip over the San Juan.  It looks a lot like the Goosenecks.  I shot a couple of shadows and off we went to Moab.

Bluff in Mid May.

  Long drive into the West.  First day to Santa Rosa to eat at the Comet Restaurant and buy a pie.  It's a long drive and the Blue Madonna Plate, plus a pie for the trip, is a nice reward.  Caution:  Whatever you order, they will probably screw it up.  Beef instead of chicken.  Peach instead of apple pie.  Its all good.  Everything is perfect.

  The next day through Alb to have breakfast with Kirk Gittings and Victoria, (and Vito), and then up  550 to Chaco, which Cindy had never seen.  I wanted to look at kivas.

Bonito doorways.

I need an I-shaped doorway.

My idea for kiva images was a bust, so no point in discussing it.  Probably need a ladder.  Or rougher kivas.  Or a different idea.

I did get to look at a lot of Kivas.

And Cindy got to tour Chaco.  All good.  We walked the Chetro Keytl site.  There is a great wall behind it, in the shade.  I didn't have my gear out of my Fuji 600T.  It's a very graphic wall.

A suspicious hole in the wall at Chetro Ketyl.

  Ravens were working a nest over the Park Headquarters.  Got out the spotting scope to take a look at the chicks and the first curious folks that wandered up contained a woman who worked with Condors at the San Diego Zoo!

The next day we forged on to a volcanic neck in SouthEast Utah.  I got a nice look at things.  Didn't have a wide enough lens for the shot I wanted out of the above scene.  Should have packed a Nikkor SW 90. That might have done it.  

Shot the first film of the trip.

I'm in there, somewhere.

Nice surprise.  

Scrambling around as the light slid by.

  Atlatl point from up in the caldera.  Odd place for it.  I was picking through bones under the Golden Eagle nest and there it was, haft sticking out of the dirt.  If only they told stories.  Beautifully thin and deadly out of a pinkish high-grade flint.  Impressive.

  Was climbing the mesa wall for a shadow shot when a sandstorm blew in.  We only had one dot of Verizon but I got a call in to Recapture lodge.  They could take us for a night early, so back to civilization we went.

The next morning we went to 17 Room Ruin on the San Juan.  I wanted to see this wall.

My overlay for putting some moons in it.

We had the ruin to ourselves.  It used to get massive visitation, but the foot bridge over the San Juan washed out.  Now much less.  It's taken a beating.  I just wanted to look at some shadows.

 Bees were buzzing.  The acoustics are so good you can talk in a normal voice and be heard at the far end of the ruin.  Hummingbirds make a heck of a racket.  They actually hum.

Had lunch in the shade afterwards.  Warm afternoons in Utah in mid-June.  Better the week before.

Up the slope picking my way through the rock shelves and boulders.  Something ate half a Gopher snake.  I got charged by a Black Widow when I disturbed one of her trip-wire web strands.  The charge was only about four inches but still an impressive thing.

 Since we were down that way, we returned to the Volcanic neck.  I found a MUCH easier way in.  Walked out to look at dikes.  Its like a mini-shiprock.  After walking out to the tip of the dike complex, I climbed all the way up to the mesa along the dike.  It's a bit sporty.

Looking North toward the tip of the dikes.

View from the corner intersection of dike and mesa.  Igneous and sedimentary intersection.  Once on top I headed East along the mesa rim to check sone viewpoints.

Bobcat carrying a snake.

  Was looking for this.  Might be prime on June 21 or thereabouts.  Shadow still swinging nearer to mesa.  I got my gear and reshot the boulder and light streak, then went up to shoot the shadow as it extended into the desert.  Back to Bluff and Recapture for dinner with some terrific folks from Wyoming.

Waving goodbye to the shadow...for a bit.