1989 | Garfield County, Utah
My father, born in 1921, almost 100 years ago now, was an irrepressible explorer. Around 1938, his aunts, not drivers, had bought a car and asked him if he would drive them from Los Angeles to visit the East Coast relatives. What teenager would not jump!
Ever since, he had stayed off the four-lanes, taken farm roads, branched off, driven through unlocked gates, and never intended to return by the same way he had gone out.
So in the year of this picture, when I was deep into my own adulthood, Dad suggested that I hop on a plane to meet him in Las Vegas to drive out for another look at Capitol Reef, the last national park he had only recently discovered for himself. But now as an adult, though still not as tall, I was able to ask him to stop here near Panguitch, long enough to set up my view camera.
After all those trips as children, asking Mom and Dad, “When are we gonna get there?” — we made it.