Almon Thompson, who was John Wesley Powell’s brother-in-law and accompanied Powell on his second expedition in 1872, was given the honor of naming the set of mountains that were found south and west of what is now Hanksville, Utah. They were the last mountain range in the contiguous United States to be surveyed. They are also south and west of another prominent geological feature, the eroded Entrada Sandstone hoodoos of Goblin Valley State Park. In the Dine language they are Dzil Bizhi Adini (mountain whose name is missing).

With a little elevation one gains the perspective of an army of mushroom-shaped rocks peering thoughtfully at the distant giants of stone.

A focal length of 36mm, so close to wide-angleland one could reach out and touch it, gave me the angle-of-view I wanted from one side of the valley to the other and from  the rock beneath my feet to the distant mountains. An aperture of f/22 provided depth-of-field; and a shutter speed of 0.3 second at ISO 100 gave me an overall slightly-lighter-than-medium exposure.

Most of the Henrys is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), while Goblin Valley is a Utah State Park. One can only hope that the powers-that-be in Utah will think of these two disparate public lands with equal consideration and care.