I planned this trip for over a year. I was mainly just going to the balloon festival and wanting to take a ride in a balloon. this was going to be the second time that I attended, the first time with digital cameras - it had been that long. During the year before the trip, a local group scheduled a group visit to the Bisit Badlands in Farmington. Bisti was scheduled for a week after the balloon fiesta ended. At first I considered going home for a week and then going back out to Farmington or skipping the fiesta and just go for Bisti. I eventually just decided to stay in New Mexico for another week. I work remotely normally, so I just decided to work from the hotel.

By staying in New Mexico, that gave me some extra days to check out some other things. One of my bucket list items was to ride the Durango & Silverton railroad. Durango is about 2 hours north of Farmington, so I scheduled a ride. The website said nothing about there being damage on the tracks, so instead of getting a ride all the way to Silverton, the train had to turn around about the halfway point. I enjoyed the ride, but I think for the photography that my trip on the Cumbres & Toltec.

With the additional time, I was also able to get out and shoot Shiprock for several sunrises and sunsets. Once the club members arrived we headed out to Bisti early the first morning. We got that an hour or so before sunrise so we could get out to a formation before the sun came up. The formation was about a mile in, so the group hoofed it straight out. They all made it in time, I didn't get there until after the sun had been up for awhile. That isn't my usual type of hike, typically I walk a little shoot a little, so this was more concentrated walking than I'm used to. The walk back was similar with very little shooting on the way back. Bisti has several entry points that are pretty far apart and the parking areas are well away from many of the named formations.

Because I was returning home from Farmington, I decided to take a different route home. I decided to go over to Page and visit the Canyon X slot canyon, part of the Antelope canyon complex. This area is less visited and they offered a photographers tour that allowed us to bring in tripods and take more time in the different areas. We were a small group, I only had two German photographers that were friends, so it was very small. We were shooting with Fall lighting where I had previously visited Antelope Canyon in the summer, so the angle of the sun was different. Canyon X didn't seem to have as many colors to the walls which might have been the sun angle.