This week I had the chance to come back to one of the few cities that I really like. Mostly I prefer to be out in nature, but as cities go Boston is one of the best. It must be one of the most vibrant cities in the world, full of a quarter million students from the more than 100 colleges and universities in the Greater Boston area.

Boston is loaded with American history and culture too. I especially enjoyed my visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

This prominent art museum is on the The Back Bay Fens (most commonly called simply “The Fens”), a wild place in the midst of Boston. The Fens gives its name to Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox.

At the museum I enjoyed the remarkable collection of classical art. I was also lucky enough to hear a jazz concert in the Tapestry Room, where my favorite classical music podcast originates.

Much sadder was seeing the empty frames that once had held some of the world’s greatest art, but which thieves stole in 1990, as I learned when I saw the documentary film Stolen. Since Ms. Gardner specified in her will that the museum remain exactly as she left it, the museum poignantly abides by her wishes as much as possible. Today, the museum remains exactly as Mrs. Gardner left it except for the loss of the 13 works due to the theft: one by the Vermeer, in my opinion the greatest early artist, five by Degas, three by Rembrandt, one by Manet, and three others. Sadly, the museum has still not recovered these masterpieces.

While the museum doesn’t allow photography, I got this pleasant shot of The Fens as I walked back to my room at the Sheraton Hotel, which is conveniently adjacent to the Hynes Convention Center, where I was working.

The Back Bay Fens

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Health Central, where I have been a staff writer since 2005, sent me to Boston this year to cover the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The figurative high point of my trip was hearing and reporting on the keynote address by Dr. Atul Gawande to the group of 1,700 of us at the convention. He is the best medical writer in the world as well as doing a few other little things like teaching at Harvard Medical School and performing surgery at a hospital here.

The literal high point of my visit was the Skywalk Observatory on the 50th floor of the 759-foot Prudential Tower, where I was able to see quite a lot of downtown Boston at sunset on Friday night.

Boston's Hancock Center and the Charles River at Sunset

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When I got into Moab, Utah, on Friday I noticed a newspaper clipping posted in the office of the motel where I am staying. It says that Landscape Arch in Arches National Park is the world’s longest. Immediately I decided that I had to photograph it.

Landscape Arch has a span of 290 feet, three feet more than Kolob Arch in Zion National Park. Rainbow Bridge is the world’s longest natural bridge, but has only the sixth longest span. Sipapu Natural Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument, which I photographed on Thursday, ranks seventh.

The entrance to Arches National Park is only two miles from Moab. Its proximity probably has a lot to do with how popular this desert town is with tourists. Visitors booked every hotel and motel room in town on Friday.

Since the park is so close to Moab, as soon as I settled into my room I drove there on Friday afternoon. But the ranger at the visitor center told me that the morning just after sunrise was the best time to photograph Landscape Arch.

So I waited. Meanwhile, I toured other areas of the park, looking especially for scenes best photographed in the late afternoon sun.

These sandstone fins, which early settlers named Park Place because they reminded them of city skyscrapers, was the first place where I stopped.

Park Place

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Next, I visited Fiery Furnace. Why these fiery red rocks got that name is easy to understand when seen in the late afternoon sunlight.

Fiery Furnace and the La Sal Mountains

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The sky over Moab that had been crystal clear turned overcast this afternoon. That could have either been great for sunset photography or awful. A cloudy sky can be more interesting or it can make the scene look dull when it blocks the sun. I took a chance that the sun would break through just before sunset, and again I was lucky.

I decided to return to Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. This morning I viewed it at a distance, but I wanted to take the three mile hike up to it, like I did in February 2009. Earlier today I wrote that I doubted if I could improve on the shot of the arch that I took then. But this evening I decided to try anyway.

In the past 14 months since I was here last I have learned a few things. Today I stayed until the last light faded; for the second shot below I used a prime lens, which is inherently sharper than a zoom lens; I used a tripod and cable release; and I processed the images with HDR. Plus, I had a more interesting sky today.

Since I can’t decide whether I prefer the horizontal or vertical orientation for the image, I will share one of each.

Delicate Arch and the La Sal Mountains

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A Vertical View of Delicate Arch

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I think that I succeeded in improving on the shot of the arch that I took on my previous trip. That image is online at http://www.mendosa.com/fitnessblog/?p=3181 so you can be the judge.

Delicate Arch is the most photographed arch in the world. It certainly is the one that I have shot the most, especially after taking 57 images this afternoon in order to show you these two.

The Colorado and Green rivers divide Canyonlands National Park into three districts. Last year I explored the Island in the Sun District, which is close to Moab. On Friday I explored the Needles District. Some day I hope to explore the Maze, which is the least accessible district of Canyonlands because of its remoteness.

The Needles is a landscape of sculptured rock spires, arches, and canyons. The Needles — rock pinnacles banded in red and white — dominate the land.

Since I arrived at midday, the light was harsh. To compensate for it I processed all my images with high dynamic range (HDR), which lets me combine three images taken almost simultaneously but at different exposures.

Canyonlands also has arches. One of them in plain sight on the horizon looks just like a huge wooden shoe.

Wooden Shoe Arch

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The image below is of one of many rock formations and doesn’t have a name. But it reminds me of a chimney.

A Chimney Rock

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Here are a few of the thousands of needles for which the district takes its name.

Needles on the Horizon

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This is truly a wilderness. It is a wilderness of rock.

Natural Bridges National Monument exists because of three huge natural bridges. I visited all three of them Thursday.

Leaving the Sierra Club outing to Grand Staircase-Escalante a couple of days early gave me the chance to explore other areas that I hadn’t seen before. I thought about the Canyon X slot canyons near Page, Arizona, but I still didn’t have enough time. I have to be in Denver by Sunday night to start a weeklong consulting contract that will take me to the Keystone ski resort — where we will work, not ski.

When I told Dave Hammack as we rode together in my SUV back from Broken Bow Arch that I was leaving that afternoon, he offered the suggestion that I followed. He recommended that I take the Burr Trail from Boulder, Utah, to Bullfrog at Lake Powell to get to Natural Bridges. I had wanted to see that southeast corner of the state, but hadn’t considered that route and any other route would take me far out of my way.

A sign told me that the Burr Trail — which nowadays is a road — was 75 unpaved miles with steep grades and sharp curves. In fact, only 16 miles are now unpaved and, while steep and sharp, they are well maintained.

The Burr Trail — named for a rancher who developed it to move cattle back and forth between winter and summer ranges — is quite scenic and runs through the south part of Canyonlands National Park. The drive took me through four federal recreation areas, all of which allowed me free entry with my interagency senior pass.

I arrived at Natural Bridges in the late afternoon in perfect time for photographing its three natural bridges. I had especially wanted to see natural bridges after seeing Broken Bow Arch the day before and Hickman Natural Bridge en route to Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Natural bridges and arches are different. The erosive action of flowing water form natural bridges. Other erosional forces — mainly the action of frost and the seepage of moisture — form arches.

Sipapu Bridge here is the world’s second largest after Rainbow Bridge in Glen Canyon. The span of Rainbow Bridge is 275 feet. But Sipapu is close, with a span of 268 feet.

Sipapu Bridge might not look all that big in my photo below, because you can’t see any humans or anything else that we are familiar with which to make a comparison. I shot Sipapu Bridge from the overlook. The trail down to the bridge is blocked by heavy snow and ice.

Sipapu Bridge

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My second night in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was even more miserable than the first night. The temperature dropped to the mid-20s if not colder. I was cold all night long in my sleeping bag, although it is rated to keep me warn down to 15 degrees.

Then, the only choices for breakfast were bagels, muffins, cereal, and melon slices. This offered me nothing to eat on my very low-carb diet, even though I had told the Sierra Club about my diet preferences when I signed up for the outing.

That’s when I decided to leave early. But I waited until after we returned from the day hike down Willow Gulch into Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. We drove 18 more miles down Hole-in-the-Rock Road from our base camp 27 miles into Grand Staircase-Escalante on that long dirt road through the center of the monument.

En route we stopped at Dance Hall Rock. Its smooth floor, sheltering alcove, and natural acoustics kept up the spirits of Mormon pioneers, when they rested from their labors of building Hole-in-the-Rock trail from Escalante to San Juan in 1880.

The Tiny Figures of People Show the Size of Dance Hall Rock

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We rested from our labors from time to time too. This was one place where we stopped and admired the view.

An Oasis in the Desert

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Our destination was Broken Bow Arch, a moderately difficult six-mile roundtrip hike down Willow Gulch. Where we could see a trail, it was faint, unmaintained and unmarked, and often required us to push through willows and other brush.

But eventually we got to the arch. When we arrived, I was surprised that it wasn’t a broken arch. Actually, it got its name when a local teacher found a broken Indian bow under the arch. It’s big, with a span of 94 feet and a height of 100 feet.

Broken Bow Arch

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When we returned to base camp I made my good-byes, struck my tent, and drove back Hole-in-the-Rock road to Escalante. I went to the same motel that I stayed at a year ago, and I greatly enjoyed the warm room and bed.

This is canyonland. The beauty of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument shines most intensely in its canyon.

The Sierra Club outing that I took here hiked our first full day down a canyon known as Harris Wash, a name that hardly does justice to the location. We hiked along and on the creek that runs through the wash for eight easy miles. Our hike took us out of the national monument into bordering Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

We crossed and recrossed the creek maybe 100 times as we walked through the narrow canyon. Sometimes the water was almost a foot deep, leading me to appreciate my new waterproof Sorrel boots that I bought for my New Zealand trip all the more.

The vegetation in this dry place is sparse. However, a few flowers were already in bloom, notably this lilly.

A Lilly Along the Trail

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Animal life was correspondingly scarce. This black rosy-finch was the only bird I saw.

A Black Rosy-Finch at Home in the Wash

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Easter Sunday this year brought me to true desert. I took a Sierra Club outing to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, about 700 miles from my home in Boulder, Colorado.

The land gets only six to seven inches of rain in a typical year. The plants all adopt different strategies to conserve what little water they get. The animals are scarce and the bugs essentially nonexistent here.

At 4 p.m. I arrived at the campground near the town of Escalante where I met the others who also joined this Sierra Club outing. In addition to the group leader and assistant, ten of us are on the outing. Six are men and six are women. By some strange coincidence, four of the men are named David.

We pitched out tents at the campground for only one night. On Monday morning we struck our tents, climbed back into our vehicles, and all of us made a six-mile hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls. The 126-foot falls are at the head of a box canyon, forming an idyllic oasis there.

Lower Calf Creek Falls

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En route to a Sierra Club outing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument I passed through hundreds of miles of desert, including Capitol Reef National Park. It is a reef in the sense that the high cliffs form a barrier to travel. It’s like our capitol in that the domes of Navajo sandstone look a lot like many of the landmarks in Washington.

I took an easy two-mile high to Hickman Natural Bridge, named for an early park advocate, Joe Hickman. The span of the bridge is 133 feet. It is 125 feet above the valley floor, where I walked.

Hickman Natural Bridge

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Driving through Dixie National Forest offers a sweeping overview of this national park and the Henry Mountains from a lookout at 9,600 feet.

Capitol Reef and the Henry Mountains

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Even in April these mountains have snow. But their beauty remains all year long.