Welcome to Ann Torrence photography - U.S. Highway 89, landscape, nature, people from Utah, the west, rural western U.S., national parks and international locations. Ann is writer of photography tips and and travel stories and essays. Photographer of U.S. 89: Character of the American West

U.S. 89 parallels the headwaters of the Virgin River in the Long Valley east of Zion National Park. The river, carving for miles through the Navajo sandstone layer of the Colorado plateau, exits the Zion Narrows into a cottonwood valley enclosed by sheer cliffs soaring upward over 2,000 feet. At the mouth of Zion Canyon, the river bends around the Watchtower, eventually joining the Colorado drainage at Lake Mead.