This photograph was taken by my wife Sheryl. I was driving in the late afternoon, heading west on Route 89 out of Page when I came across a small parking lot in teh middle of nowhere. There were Bureau of Land Management (BLM) signs talking about some of the features in this area with rough instructions on a hike that leads to hoodoos.

The instructions couldn't be more vague such as "continue op the sandy wash for about 1/2 mile..." Without a clue of what we were going to see, I loaded up the big equipment and we headed north into the desert. The hiking is slow since the sandy wash is like hiking up a level sand dune.

What we found at the end was an area of immense beauty - swirling orange and white sandstone that had been eroded by the rain and wind forming hoodoos, where the base soft sandstone layer erodes faster than the top layer of limestone. In Grand Staircase Escalante and throughout the southwest, these hoodoos are also called toadstools since they resemble enormous mushrooms in shape.

We had no idea at the time or even shortly thereafter that we had hiked to a well known destination entirely by chance.

Canon EOS-1, Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 SP Aspherical, Exposure data not recorded, Fuji Velvia, EI 50, handheld