Sundar Narayanan

October 24, 2025

adventure, all part of life, art, Caves, landscapes, photoblog, photography, travel, Turkey, videoblog

Goreme Open Air Museum - Kapadokya

Sundar Narayanan

October 24, 2025

adventure, all part of life, art, Caves, landscapes, photoblog, photography, travel, Turkey, videoblog

The previous post in this trip series is here..

After watching the balloons rise and having a nice breakfast we were picked up at the lobby by our tourguide and driver for a Viator all day tour of Kapadokya. She was a very nice person trying to manage the time between giving us history and trying to have fun. She did an excellent job.

To thank her we participated in her promo reels!

Our first stop in the tour was the Goreme open air museum. This place has some amazing history during post crucifixion times when Christianity was a forbidden religion. The cave monastries and the paintings inside that date back to 700 AD were amazing. Unfortunately no pictures in most places allowed, understandably as the flash might damage what is left of the pigments.

Here are the pictures.. the first one was by Jr. who was trying to get the sun flare to land on us.. I got to teach her geometrical optics during this process! She was temporarily impressed with daddy for a good 30 seconds.

There is also a lot of history on St. George here that I found fascinating.

and here is the short video highlight reel..

On the whole this was an amazing place. It was good we started the trip here because by the time we got out to the exit, temperatures were already in the 90’s! We were glad to get back to air conditioning for a while..

Sundar Narayanan

October 23, 2025

adventure, all part of life, desert, health, hiking, landscapes, photoblog, photography, state park, travel, videoblog

Coral Pink Sand Dunes state park in Utah

Sundar Narayanan

October 23, 2025

adventure, all part of life, desert, health, hiking, landscapes, photoblog, photography, state park, travel, videoblog

The previous post in this trip series is here..

We had just enough time after finishing lunch at Bryce lodge to make a 45 minute stop at Coral PInk Sand Dunes state park. We had planned this as part of the trip as it had rave reviews. It was an extra 1 hour detour and we were warned that return traffic when we cross the tunnel into Zion would be horrible later in the day. Still we had the 45 minutes and were glad we went.

The drive on local state routes from Bryce to Coral Pink dunes was beautiful with the trees showing fall colors. We got in, went straight to the observation deck, then down to the large dune to do a photo shoot and started driving back. The weather was cool and the sand was not hot. It was extremely windy and the fine sand did a facial for all of us. The standing bow I did with the wind in my face was one of the most difficult I have tried. My feet kept going into the stand even as I was still. It was more difficult than doing this on a beach with waves!

If you do start early enough from Zion to do Bryce, then definitely recommend this. Our return was slow because of the tunnel traffic. The sky put on quite a show on route 15. Still we made it to the airport with 10 minutes go give an earful to the Avis manager for giving us a smoke filled car. I pretty much slept through the return flight as my feet were shaking.

A video highlights reel of the dunes and the drives to dunes and back to Vegas..

Was very glad we went on the trip. Lot of nature, fun with friends, happy wife, bucket list item checked off.. felt happy and contented after this trip.

Sundar Narayanan

October 23, 2025

adventure, canyon, health, hiking, HDR, landscapes, national park, photoblog, photography, portrait, travel, videoblog

Revisiting Bryce canyon after 20+ years

Sundar Narayanan

October 23, 2025

adventure, canyon, health, hiking, HDR, landscapes, national park, photoblog, photography, portrait, travel, videoblog

The previous post in this series is here..

The first plan was to start driving from Zion at 4 AM to see sunrise at Bryce. By majority vote (everyone except me that is), this plan was vetoed, torpedoed and buried faster than I could explain. So we left at 6:30 AM and drove to Bryce. It was a beautiful drive with the windows down for the most part.

We parked our car at the store and started hiking from there. The trail to sunrise point is close by. We went through sunrise point, the Navajo trail to Queen Victoria, then came back through the Two Bridges, a little steep but shorter. We ended up at sunset point. From there we walked to the Bryce lodge and had a nice lunch. We were the second group waiting in line to be seated. We had to wait for 15 minutes and they opened promptly at 11:30. We had finished lunch and were out of the gift store by 12:30. There was still time to add one more stop to our trip and still make it to Las Vegas airport in time. So we walked fast from the lodge to the store and I made a dash for the next stop.

This is is pretty much everything we got from the morning at Bryce.. the memories of the smiling faces.. priceless!

The nature galleries..

Portait format photos.. I clicked a lot more but these are the highlights.. as for why I am smiling so much, Angels landing. has been on the bucket list for a long long long time. So I was just feeling so happy!