As the dawn twilight brightened the sky, I emerged from the truck feeling much better. Last night’s resolution to truncate this trip and head home showed some signs of weakening. I felt pretty good and could walk without any painful symptoms. So, as I downed my morning Starbucks-in-a-can and two boiled eggs, the prospect of continuing on to Little Finland, which was the original plan, seemed not only possible but desirable. I decided to postpone my decision until I got on the road. The decision point would be reached when I got to exit 112 on I-95, south of Mesquite. I could continue straight and go home, or exit there for Little Finland.

Which was what I did. I took the exit, crossed the Virgin River, and headed south down New Gold Butte road into Gold Butte National Monument. This area was declared a National Monument by President Obama in his final days and now is in danger of losing its status under President Trump. The area is mountainous, with intricate rock formations, Joshua trees, dry washes, Native American petroglyphs, and an old gold mine.

I first learned of Little Finland when brother Jim sent me a link to a photo on flickr showing its amazing and bizarre rock formations. The area was made popular among photographers in the 1990s by Isabel and Steffen Synatschke, German photographers who explored and beautifully photographed much of the American Southwest. I don’t know the origin of the name “Little Finland”, but I think that it came from them. I really wanted to go there, and I searched the web for location information. All I could find were three gps waypoints purporting to show the route. I took these and placed them on a paper map and set out on a journey.

With much trepidation I followed the road down to a double track trail that soon descended into a dry wash (ominously call “Mud Flat”) and drove up the wash for a few miles. Leaving the wash, I made a U-turn and drove back for a mile before I got to a low mesa, which was a far as I could go. And I was there! Last week, on probably my seventh or eighth trip to Little Finland, I noticed that the Park Service has now put up road signs to show the way. I’m not sure that this is a good thing.

I wanted to return this time to try out my new DJI Osmo Pocket 4k video camera. The good thing about it is, it’s really tiny. The bad thing is, it’s really tiny. It does a great job with image stabilization, but my old eyes couldn’t see the tiny display well enough to see what was being stabilized. Also, with just two buttons for control (one of which is the ON-OFF switch), I kept switching from movie to stills mode, which I didn’t notice until I got home. So I got about four worthless videos and 20 jpegs that I though were going to be videos. It turns out that I can’t walk and shoot video at the same time anyway. So you won’t see any of these. Which is a real shame, because the changing perspective that video offers can show the rock formations in a way that stills just can’t.