In 2021, Lisa and I returned to Utah a third time, beginning in lovely Park City before turning south toward canyon country that already felt like familiar ground. We went back to Arches and Canyonlands, drawn again to arrangements of rock we thought we already knew but never tired of, and to the expanse of Capitol Reef, which rewards patience more than any other park in the state. We also returned to Monument Valley which felt like a pilgrimage, its majestic buttes no less staggering the second time around. And for the first time, we drove to Goblin Valley, a stretch of desert scattered with thousands of squat, trippy mushroom-shaped hoodoos, an eroded landscape so strange it doesn’t look real.

On this, our third trip, Lisa and I noticed that something had changed in how we experienced these places. Arches and Canyonlands no longer stopped us cold the way they had in 2014; instead, they felt like an earlier conversation had resumed with Mother Nature herself, the land offering details we’d missed before: here a shift of light, there an overlook we hadn’t found on earlier visits. Capitol Reef, which felt quieter and less crowded than its famous neighbors, kept proving itself the most underrated place in southern Utah.

Goblin Valley, though, gave us something we didn’t expect this far into our acquaintance with the state: surprise. Wandering among hoodoos barely knee-high and others looming over us like silent giants, we were reminded that this landscape hadn’t shown us everything yet, and probably never will. Three trips in, we’ve given up trying to fully take Utah’s measure. These photos are a feeble attempt to hold onto the gifts that Utah gave us. As we grow older and reflect on the beauty captured in our photos, we know they won’t be the last.

p