HandleyCraft Photography Blog

View Original

A Week in Quartzsite Arizona

Looking towards the setting sun in the Quartzsite basin. The air is always filled with dust at the end of day.

We drove down to the desert of Arizona to escape the arrival of a polar vortex in Utah. We staked our camp on BLM property outside the town of Quartzsite. It’s a dry and dusty place to spend a few weeks, but while it was in the teens and twenties at home, we were in the mid 60’s in camp, except for when a howling wind beat upon us. There is no pleasure being out in a dust storm no matter how warm it is. Even with 60° temperature, the wind brings the chill factor down to the 50’s or even the 40’s. We were comfortable in our Scamp. I hiked into the desert every evening around 5:00 for an hour of photography. The low-angle sun was beautiful as it raked across the rugged landscape. In mid-afternoon light, the scenery was harsh and dry, but for an hour in late afternoon, the desert comes to life and is revealed in both color and texture.

All of these images were made within a 5-minute walk of our campsite.

Saguaro cactus detail