The NAU Loop in 3 days (Nevada, Arizona, Utah) /  by Anthony Ngu

I was headed to Nevada for a climbing trip near Las Vegas and decided to spend a couple days after for a quick round trip through Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

Some people call it the Grand Canyon Loop, but I like to call it the NAU Loop (Nevada, Arizona, and Utah) I pronounce it as the "now loop" since you need to do it right now! It's that epic.

Want to see the route on a map?

The Main Stops:

  • Red Rock, Nevada

    • Red Rock has a bunch of cool features for climbers, but also some hikes that you can do without worrying about getting lost.

  • Grand Canyon
    • Iconic and an epic view to see such a huge gap with flat land on both sides. They've also got a glass platform and a zip line now.
  • Horseshoe Bend & Antelope Canyon in Page, Arizona
    • Horseshoe Bend is a great view for sunrise and a short walk from the parking lot. They are building a lookout platform right now.
    • Antelope Canyon is a cool slot canyon to walk through but requires a guide and is a bit hard to get immersed in because you have to move along at the same pace as the rest of your tour group.
  • Bryce Canyon
    • Holy cow it looks like a maze of amazing rock pillars. It's definitely worth hiking through and the Navajo Loop is what I did.
  • Zion National Park
    • There is so much to see here but I only had enough time to do one hike and I chose to do Angel's Landing which was completely worth it. You get 3 different views on one trail!
  • Valley of Fire
    • Amazing views and really cool features with a lot of trails that you could easily spend a full day exploring

Things to Know:

Most of the National parks cost around $30 to enter per car, but if you get the Annual National Park Pass, you get access to all of the United States National Parks for $80! (It's worth it just for the NAU loop)

My Itinerary:

We started off a bit later that I was planning to on Day 1 and went to BabyStacks Cafe for pancakes and a Hawaiian style breakfast (really good!), then we started the drive to the Grand Canyon. We spent about an hour there walking alongside the rim and taking some photos next to the canyon edge. Then we hopped back in the car and drove to Page, Arizona a bit after sunset. Even though we missed the sunset and last remaining light, we still decided to walk down the trail to Horseshoe Bend for some night shots and I was able to snag this shot.

On Day 2 we woke up early to watch the sunrise at Horseshoe Bend and wow was it windy! The wind whipped around and caused the sand to sting our faces. After the sun rose and the crowds of tourists began arriving to Horseshoe Bend, we drove over to Ken's Tours for our scheduled tour of Lower Antelope Canyon. We started the tour and began walking through the famous slot canyon. When we ended though, we noticed that it had started snowing! It was around 10 AM and we drove to Bryce Canyon where it was snowing even harder! After waiting a little bit for a break in the snowfall, we walked around and started the Navajo loo. After a couple hours and a bit of walking around in Bryce Canyon National Park, we drove a bit more and stopped for the night nearby Zion National Park in preparation for Day 3.

The morning of Day 3 we woke up and began our hike up Angel's Landing in Zion National Park, It was a bit rough in places because of the recent snowfall, but it was well worth it for the impressive views. After completing that hike, we drove back down towards Las Vegas and stopped by the Valley of Fire around sunset before heading back to Vegas for our flight out that night.

266 Likes, 23 Comments - Anthony Ngu ➡ (a·new·life) (@angulife) on Instagram: "She forgot her hat at home and was so happy when she found this one while shopping. 🔥 it was meant..."

Do I Recommend This Road Trip?

If you've only got a couple days, then of course! Pack as much in as you can! However, ideally you would spend a full week doing this road trip so you could relax a bit and explore more of each park.  You can easily spend way more time in Bryce National Park, Zion National Park, and the Valley of Fire.

If you are even able to extend your trip by a couple more days, I would suggest increasing the loop to include Arches National Park, Moab, and the Bonneville Salt Flats.

A Week in Oahu w/ Moment Lenses /  by Anthony Ngu

I left Seattle about a week ago for the warm beaches of Oahu and spent that time adventuring around the island, shooting phone photography with Moment lenses, and eating poke, spam musubis, and shaved ice.

I got the chance to use the new Moment lenses and case with my iPhone X and thought that I would share some of the key highlights from my experiences with Moment lenses:

  1. The freedom of bringing something light.
    • Since I'm already bringing my phone with me everywhere, the only additional thing I need to bring is each of the lenses that I think I'll be using.
    • (For reference) I usually carry my Sony A7RII with an 18mm f2.8 Lens as well as 35mm and 85mm lenses, so you can imagine how bulky and heavy my bag can get.
  2. The quality of these lenses.
    • I didn't see any issues with photo clarity aside from the occasional sun flare when looking at the sun.
    • The only downside is the sensor size in your phone vs. a professional camera. So you can't crop in as much or blow up an image with the same fidelity (but that is expected)
  3. Easy attach/detach
    • Their phone case provides an easy way to attach/detach the lenses without having the fumble to get the right positioning. (It also comes with a stylish wood accent)
  4. Using the Moment app, the photos can be shot and stored on the phone in RAW and then edited easily.
    • When paired with an editing in the Lightroom app, you can make easy on the go edits of photos without ever having to touch a computer!

My favorite lens was the Wide for those landscape and context shots when I was adventuring.

206 Likes, 9 Comments - Anthony Ngu - a(new)life (@angulife) on Instagram: "Day 3 and I did another sunrise hike! My legs haven't given up on me yet 😅 . But dang those were..."

The Ultra-wide was great for livestreaming and Instagram stories, but they didn't match my style when it came to taking photos with it.

The Macro lens was a really cool specialty lens for the close-up shots but from my experiences it seemed to only fit that one niche.

I didn't get the chance to try out the Tele lens but I imagine it would be amazing for those long focal length shots when paired with the already 2x lens of the iPhone X.

Overall, I highly recommend Moment's lenses for the on-the-go content creator, mobile photographer, or even just someone who wants a different look for the photos they take with their phone!

Here are some other shots I took with the Moment lenses and app during my time in Hawaii, for more check out my Instagram @angulife!

 

What's New? /  by Anthony Ngu

I've been doing a lot of photography lately and just took a break from writing up about my life (Let's be honest, I wasn't very good with keeping on track before anyways..) If you want to check out my latest photos, don't forget to follow me! https://www.instagram.com/angulife/

What's New?

I ran out of space on my last external hard drive (where I store all of my photos/videos) so I ended up buying a new 4TB External Hard Drive for around $100. This is the one I bought because it ended up being the same size as my older one but with 2 Terabytes more space on it and I felt comfortable carrying it around with me on travels.

I also broke my Samsung S7 Edge and have been borrowing an old Samsung S6 while I waited for both the Pixel 2, iPhone 8, and iPhone X to come out. I ended up going with the iPhone X after hearing some negative reviews about the Pixel 2 screen despite it's amazing camera. I used to own an iPhone 5 but switched to Android when given the chance and enjoyed using that for a couple of years. I am looking forward to the slow motion video on the iPhone X as well as the bigger screen despite not being a much bigger phone. The only downside is the current wait time for pre-orders of the iPhone X... Let's see if I can snag one this Friday by walking into my local Apple Store when it opens.

In latest news the new Sony A7RIII has been released and it's what everyone wanted with the next generation A7R camera. It has a bigger battery, dual memory card slots, better auto-focus, 10fps instead of the very 'meh' 5fps of the A7RII, 4K video uses all of the camera sensor, and a couple other great additions. The only downside is that I bought my A7RII for around $3k last year and the prices of them have already begun to drop to around $1,900 for a used one, so selling mine might not be worth it at this point.

 

We Saw The Totality! - USA Solar Eclipse 2017 /  by Anthony Ngu

Monday, August 21st a Solar Eclipse swept across the United States and since I live in Seattle, I was able to drive down to Oregon to view the totality (an event where the moon totally eclipses the sun and a cool effect called the corona is visible to the naked eye!

Here's the vlog I produced from the adventure if you want to watch it unfold:

The plan was to drive on Sunday from Seattle to Painted Hill, Oregon for the totality viewing on Monday morning. Why Painted Hills? It's dead center on the line of totality and has about 2 minutes of totality viewing. The line for the totality literally passes over the painted hills lookout.

The drive between Seattle and Painted Hills takes about 6 hours usually and on Sunday the traffic wasn't horrible so we were able to make that timing and arrived at Painted Hills around 5 pm. The rangers had closed off the usual route into the Painted Hills Lookout and had set up a parking lot that was closed from 9 pm until 6 am (sunset to sunrise). We had come prepared to sleep in the back of my Subaru Crosstrek and luckily the rangers mentioned that we could camp out across the street in what is called BLM land (Bureau of Land Management) so we decided to do that and parked our car about a 10 minute walk away from the parking lot which is about a 15 minute walk from the Painted Hills Lookout. Not too bad!

We went to the Painted Hills Lookout for sunset after a quick sandwich meal and enjoyed the sunset before calling it a night and making our way back to the car. I took some astrophotography shots that night because the stars were so clear but went to sleep pretty early.

The next morning we woke up at 5 am to a line of cars on the road but luckily we were able to jump out of our car and just walk over to the lookout! So we took our time and got a sweet spot on the lookout over the painted hill and I set up my camera gear to prepare for the eclipse.

That's how I was able to capture some of these images and the video for the Youtube Vlog

The totality was amazing to see in person and it's hard to describe because it's just such a unique and crazy sight. After we watched the whole solar eclipse finish, we went to check out the nearby Painted Cove before jumping in our car and heading back home. The route back ended up taking close to 9 hours instead of the normal 6, but that wasn't bad considering the number of people traveling back that same day.

What a sight to behold.. definitely one of my favorite moments of 2017 and possibly my life.

Hiked to a Hidden Lake /  by Anthony Ngu

Spent this weekend hiking to a place called Hidden Lake and I had no clue what to expect.

In order to get to the hike from Seattle we woke up at 4:00 am and drove two and a half hours and through 4 miles of gravel, pot hole riddled road. There was a moment where our cars almost got stuck because a couple of holes were big enough that tires weren't touching the ground but with a careful positioning of the tires and a little extra weight courtesy of two more passengers we managed to triumph over the hole. Parking at the trailhead was pretty tight, but luckily we got there early and snagged two prime spots near the trail.

The start of the hike was pretty normal and we hiked through the forest for about a mile before reaching a clearing in the canyon. We then started to hike up through the canyon crevice where there was a small river and a lot of waist high plants and flowers. If you looked back during the hike you could see down the whole canyon crevice which made for amazing views. Once we got to the top of the ridge, we expected to see the lake but there was another ridge just past it. 

After that ridge, we found out that the lake was huge and actually a significant hike down the other side. While on top of that ridge, we decided to instead head up a short but steep path to the lookout tower and relax there. After that, we trekked down back to our cars and arrived back home around 7pm.

Overnight Backpacking Trip to Gothic Basin /  by Anthony Ngu

A couple friends and I decided to do a harder hike and camping trip over this past weekend. We ultimately decided on Gothic Basin, a 9 mile and 3000 foot elevation gain trail.

I met up with Charlie and we went to REI before our trek in order to pick up some gear and we began our trek. Unfortunately, we didn't make it for sunset because the hike up took a toll on us and sunrise the following morning was quite cloudy and foggy.

I later learned that my bag is pretty heavy in comparison to normal backpacking stashes (mine was around 50 lbs). Here's what my bag consisted of:

Check out the vlog of our adventure!

Sunrise Hike to Mt. Pilchuck /  by Anthony Ngu

Albert, Hillary, and I decided to do a sunrise hike up Mt. Pilchuck to the lookout tower and planned it the night before realizing that we would have to leave Seattle around 1 am in order to make it up to the peak by 5 am (sunrise). It took us around 2 hours to drive to Mt. Pilchuck and we started the hike around 3 am. To be honest, it was an arduous hike with an elevation gain of 2200 feet for around 2.6 miles one way, but the views were spectacular and well worth the amount of energy it took to get up to the top.

Since we started the hike at 3 am, before sunrise, we had to walk most of the trail in the dark while carrying flashlights. By the time we got close to the peak, the "blue hour" was well under way and we didn't need the flashlights anymore. It turns out that a couple parties of people had stayed the night in the lookout tower since sunset the previous day (great idea! and something I plan to do in the future)

We hung out at the lookout tower for a couple hours and grabbed some photos as the sun rose and illuminated the sky. (Note: it was pretty windy, so I would advise hand warmers, jackets, and blankets) There was a moment where a fellow vlogger was out on a different peak and the wind picked up some of the snow from the mountainside and wafted it over him and the ridge he was standing on in an arc making it look like he had a force field.

I highly recommend this hike. It's my favorite so far!

Here's the vlog video to go along with the hike! Let me know what you think and subscribe if you want to see more!