Utah Photo Adventure, Part 4 - Mars Desert

  (NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of posts about a photography trip I took in early November, 2022.)

A few miles east of Factory Butte and Moonscape Overlook is yet another barren basin of sand and rock.  

The landscape looks somewhat like that of Mars -- no vegetation, flat plains filled with rocky debris, surrounded by multicolored hills. 

Fittingly, the area is home to the Mars Desert Research Station, a private, space-analog facility that supports Earth-based research in pursuit of the technology, operations, and science required for human space exploration.  

It is owned and operated by the Mars Society, a space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of Mars.  The station sits on land leased from the State of Utah, and does not permit visitors (or drones).

We made our first visit to the area on the same overcast day that began at Moonscape Overlook.  Not a great day for photography . . .

We returned the next morning for sunrise, and were rewarded with much better light, colors, and shadows.  Blue Hour wasn't great, but Golden Hour was good.

Frankly, it looked like a giant garbage dump for rocks, from the smallest . . .

. . . to the largest . . .

See Alan in that little space under the big rock?

and everything in between -- all shapes, sizes, and colors jumbled together:

(Do the rocks in the upper left corner look like two alligators having sex?)

And what should we see peeking over the valley rim as we departed the Mars Desert?

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!