Glen Canyon (Marble Canyon)

Posted on October 10, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

Highway 89 travels like it is avoiding the [[Vermillion Cliffs]] at all costs before making a sharp left across some alluvial fans and stabbing across the Colorado River via the [[Navajo Bridge]]. Today there are two Navajo Bridges: a new one which can handle the heavy trucks of today and an older one — the original — which now carries only walkers. both mark the only gateway within Arizona to the region known as the Strip.

We stopped on the “mainland” side of the bridges to walk across and read the signs placed by the NPS. I found it a little unnerving to stop at the steel plates that join the two halves of the old Navajo Bridge or to look over the side at the great, green, greasy-looking Colorado River whose banks are quite barren of fever trees. We spent but little time there, mostly coaxing a ranger to give us a brochure about Lee’s Ferry — just upriver — so we could hike the River Trail and explore the ruins of a small town founded by one of the perpetrators of the [[Mountain Meadows Massacre]].

For whatever reason, the area is under the jurisdiction of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area rather than Grand Canyon National Park which begins just south of the new Navajo Bridge. Signs along the short access road explain the geology of the Vermillion Cliffs and point out odd features such as chunks of [[Navajo Sandstone]] that have rolled off onto pedestals of the [[Moenkopi Formation]].

We performed all our obligations by stopping at turnouts and hiking the River Trail up to the last set of ruins. There wasn’t much difference between these nineteenth century relics and [[Anasazi]] pueblos — they were made of the same stone, using the same mortar. Pieces of a steamboat poked up in the water and a piece of cable from the original operation lay on a beach covered with desert pavement. When we were finished, we watched some packers set up their boats for a raft expedition down river. The concrete ramp and that alone may have been the reason for the separation of this area from the national park. Or maybe it was just too far from the main area of operations.

Here is the album in my gallery (10 pics).

Click on more to see important notes.

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Grand Canyon – South Rim

Posted on October 9, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

I am not [[Ansel Adams]] and I make every effort not to frame my photos as he might have done. For every scene, I endeavor to create a unique take. And yet there are places on this planet where my camera turns out material like that being engendered by the legions of shutters being pointed by those beside me, as engendered by the legions who came before me, and by those who are yet to come.

Photographing the Grand Canyon and maintaining one’s peculiar artistic vision sucks. Thank the Universe for the condors, the clouds, the split-twig figurines at the Tusayan Museum, and for the junipers beside the rim trail.

The canyon was once a wondrous discovery for Pedro de Tovar who came on orders of [[Francisco_Vásquez_de_Coronado|Vasquez-Coronado]] and, having no camera, found himself unable to relay the vibrant magnitude of the gorge. Somewhere near Desert View, he and his men scrambled into the abyss, aiming for the river they saw in the distance. Palisade after palisade thwarted their desire to drink of the muddy Colorado. Perhaps Tovar was a lucky man because he did not have to bring home images that looked pretty much like all the other images that people have taken over the years of what one writer described as “an erosion-control engineer’s nightmare”. All that pinkness and yellowness squashed together in layers that Fundamentalists have tried hard to read as incidents in the course of The Flood despite the reality that the canyon is an amazing indictment against Creationism. Yet its magnitude overwhelms its details, so the story is not heard. We see it as a backdrop, a canvas without a voice, the epitome of what [[Alfred_Stieglitz|Stieglitz]] held to be the accessibility of all Nature to the amateur photographer: you see one picture of the Grand Canyon from Grandview Point, you’ve seen them all. Or just about.

We started our day at Mather Point where we made our acquaintance with the condors who were a sensation two days ago when we posted them to our blogs. (See Lynn here.) We then rode the bus designed for the hordes to the El Tovar, had a fine lunch with a mediocre view, and then rode back to the truck. Because the Red Line was down for the day, we drove out to Hermit’s Rest, gave a ride to a stranded girl back to the Village, and then went out by way of the Tusayan Museum (where I scryed the famous stick figurines*) and Desert View.

In other words, we did our tourist duties.

It was at Desert View, while others were trying to capture the colors, that I aimed my camera into the sun and the mist:

Was this more like Adams or Stieglitz? Or could I claim it as distinctly my own?

Here is the album in my gallery (20+ pics).

*Check out the Quicktime plug-in of the split-twig figurines on this page.

Click on more to see important notes.

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Petrified Forest

Posted on October 9, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

Our stop at Walnut Canyon National Monument was brief. We walked the Rim Trail where I spied a fine patch of paintbrush. We reserved the day for Petrified Forest National Park but a pack of thickening [[Cumulus_cloud|cumuli]] brought the makings of a storm.

We began our visit by driving past our turnoff and heading about eighteen miles towards the town of Snowflake, high on the plains of eastern Arizona. When the park road did not materialize, I pulled out a map, realized my error, and reversed our course until we found the large petrified wood yard that had distracted me from seeing the brown sign pointing to the park. The entrance was flanked by a pair of tacky souvenir stores and “museums” that we paid the briefest of visits as the first drops of rain came down. I announced to Lynn that we were abandoning our plans to walk the Long Logs and Agate House trails — I wasn’t going to get caught in the downpour which actually did come later.

The park describes itself as two parks: the fossilized trees in the south and the [[Painted_Desert%2C_Arizona|Painted Desert]] in the north. Or to put it another way: heaps of colorful, crystalline stone versus vivid mudpiles. I got down on my hands and knees to enjoy the silicates, lying on my side to get the best closeups. The NPS thoughtfully provided paved paths through Giant Logs and the Crystal Forest, so I did not muddy myself.

The insensitivity of tourists never ceases to amaze me. At Agate Bridge, a troupe of Australians ignored warning signs and went for a gander on the wet mud, leaving their footprints behind. I nearly remarked that it was a lot easier to disobey the rules when it is not your own country’s heritage being trashed but my mood stabilizers were working and I held my tongue.

Far more tolerable were the Filipinos who we met at Newspaper Rock. I set up my telephoto lens so I could get decent views of the petroglyphs from which the Park Service kept us by means of steep cliffs. I helped them find the chippings and let them look through my camera so they could find the hard to see outline of [[Kokopelli]]. We kept following them and they kept following us for the rest of the afternoon, exchanging quips at every stop and smiling broadly.

Here is the album in my gallery (30 pics).

Click on more to see important notes.

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Wupatki

Posted on October 8, 2007 in Photos Vacation Fall 2007

The speck attached itself to the ramparts of the red sandstone pueblo and stayed there. I stood in the parking lot, waiting for the good picture moment, when the cerulean dot would move behind the ruin. But it darted about, an icefly intent on destroying the mood of desolation and isolation that I was trying to convey. Ruins must do that. It is not proper to have someone hanging from them or otherwise obstructing the view as this senior citizen insisted on doing. She was as in my face as a frat boy on Spring Break. Had she drunk deep of brewed spirits and burped loudly, I don’t think she would have annoyed me more.

In the end I had to wait her out. I got the shot and then put up with a brash fellow from who knows where with a butt that waggled and begged to fill my frame. He moved only when his wife climbed down from the ruin and discussed the image he’d just taken. I photographed his white and black-striped butt as possible future revenge.

I don’t know why they’ve never combined Wupatki National Monument with Sunset Crater as a big national park devoted to the impact of geology on human society. As laid out since the 1950s, the two government tracts lie within nineteen miles of each other, separated by empty juniper forests and sage prairie.

We roamed all the “name” ruins, me trying to find the eye I thought I had lost with the death of my old camera and Lynn patiently coming along. She read every word of the trail guide to the main ruin as I fiddled with angles and cursed the midday light that faded the intense red of the rocks to a fizzled bloody pink. It wasn’t until we got to the third pullover of the day — at the fortification called The Citadel that I began getting a feel for the land. Most extraordinarilly, I realized that we were surrounded by miles and miles of open prairie with not a tree in sight. The sky, too, held nothing other than the blue of filtered space. I captured this landscape from the rim of the butte and called it the best and truest of the day.

Here is the album in my gallery (9 pics).

Click on more to see important notes.

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