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Southwest, 2005
Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2010 9:08 am
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:49 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 4:42 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2010 10:02 pm
by Highlander
Nice pictures. There are tons of kinds of cacti; you picture a rather henious variety ... cholla or jumping cactus. Keep your distance, they will detach onto people and are near impossible to remove once attached.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 9:37 pm
by Roanoker
Highlander wrote:
Nice pictures. There are tons of kinds of cacti; you picture a rather henious variety ... cholla or jumping cactus. Keep your distance, they will detach onto people and are near impossible to remove once attached.
Thank you. I looked up "cholla cactus" in Google images to see which one you were referring to. (I almost never know the names of plants.) I learned that it is also called "Teddy Bear Cholla." One of the displayed pictures actually looks like a bunch of teddy bears!
Now for this week's batch. We're still at Superstition Mountain.
The original picture was portrait-oriented. It lent itself to an easy blue-to-blue blend, filling in the left side.
I do love this purple grass.
It's pretty even as a foreground blur.
Sometimes the sky makes a good background.
Back where we started, I guess.
Look, but don't touch!
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri May 14, 2010 4:14 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:47 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 9:10 am
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 3:48 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 8:54 am
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 9:02 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 9:31 pm
by Highlander
Thanks for posting. The Grand Canyon is great from any vantage point. Did you make it to the north rim?
Humphreys Peak seems so out of place....looks like the Arizona ski bowl might have still been open.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:29 am
by Roanoker
Highlander wrote:
Thanks for posting.
Thank you for commenting!
The Grand Canyon is great from any vantage point.
Indeed.
Did you make it to the north rim?
No. I thought my son said at the time that it was snowy, or the roads were not yet open for the season. (It was late April in 2005.) But when I asked him about last night, he said we didn't have enough time. He'd like to. So would I.
Humphreys Peak seems so out of place....looks like the Arizona ski bowl might have still been open.
I don't know about the ski bowl thing, but yeah, one would think you'd see only desert terrain in Arizona. I think my son said last night that Humphreys is a volcano.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 1:03 pm
by FangKC
Roanoker, I lived in Arizona for seven year, and your photos make me miss it.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 8:05 pm
by Highlander
Roanoker wrote:
No. I thought my son said at the time that it was snowy, or the roads were not yet open for the season. (It was late April in 2005.) But when I asked him about last night, he said we didn't have enough time. He'd like to. So would I.
It's 9000' and has a nice subalpine feel to it. The Kaibab Squirrel is a bizarre local species that makes the trip worthwhile if you see one.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 6:50 pm
by Roanoker
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 10:07 am
by Roanoker
It is the morning of April 27, 2005, and we are getting ready to ride mules down into the Grand Canyon.
These are wranglers, preparing for the descent.
This is Casey, the "Chief Wranger." He gave us a great speech on what to expect. I wish I had a copy of his words. His main point was that this may be the most difficult thing we will ever do. It is hard work. He told us we could back out now with a full refund, and a few folks did just that.
Son and husband are the soon-to-be riders on the left.
Awww.
One more shot of the canyon before we go down.
You can see the tail end of a previous group of riders as they work their way around the first "corner." (I like this picture.)
This 80-year-old lady really wanted to go, but she simply could not do it. You can see why there is a 200-pound limit on the riders. The mules can handle more weight, but the wranglers cannot, or they prefer not to.
Here is my son, on his very well behaved mule, Sugar.
Here is my husband, on Mutton, who preferred to drag behind most of the time. (My son took a picture of me, but it is in another folder. Too bad.)
We are on our way! It was a little tricky to manage the reins, a "whip," a water flask, my wits,
and a heavy camera.
Everybody had to wear wide-brimmed hats and sip water from provided flasks to avoid having to be air-lifted out of the canyon.
Periodically, the wranglers would stop the descent so the mules could rest. We'd all turn toward the canyon, side by side.
More next week.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:08 am
by Roanoker
We stopped halfway down for lunch.
The group of mule riders just before us had finished their lunch and were getting ready to leave.
The picnic area had--YAAAY--restrooms.
Lunch over. Back on the road.
This is my favorite picture. Beautiful flowers growing right out of the rock.
Stopping for a rest and a view of the Colorado River.
We're close to the bottom. The river looks more like hot chocolate. There had been a lot of rain that year.
If anyone drops anything, the whole mule train has to stop, and the wrangler has to find it and return it to the culprit or put it in carry-along trash. Someone had dropped something here. Notice the narrow bridge across the river. We would eventually have to cross it. Incidentally, the left part of the picture is the full, portrait-oriented picture. The part on the right is a larger view of the bottom right part of the picture. I feathered the edge and cloned out the wrangler's knee.
One last pit stop before our destination.
We have arrived at the Phantom Ranch, and this is our cabin.
The door leads to the bathroom. Notice the little plastic bag on the chair? Each rider had to fit all of his necessary belongings in that bag for an overnight stay. It was a challenge.
Here is where we slept. Sleep came easily after a long day of riding.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 5:32 pm
by Roanoker
Now it is time for the mules to go to
their "cabins."
We had time to explore the bottom of the canyon. This is Bright Angel Creek.
Another view of the creek.
If I have a camera and time on my hands, you will get flowers.
Dinner! We had steaks. You would not believe how good those were. All the food was amazingly good.
After dinner, time for more exploring.
My son is maybe thinking about going over the bridge over the creek.
I know. But there were so many of them, and they were beautiful.
It doesn't look like we were at the bottom of a massive canyon, but we were.
This is another view of the Colorado River. That's the same bridge we rode across on the mules. I think it might have been a little scary. Now, it's just pretty.
Nice memories.
Re: Southwest, 2005
Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:55 am
by moderne
Brings back some vivid memories: we hiked on foot to the bottom of the canyon. It was a pleasant alpine day on the rim, by the time we got to the bottom it was a blazing desert inferno. Going down was easy, uphill was a nightmare. About a third of the way up I got shin splints and had to rest every 20 yards or so. I wanted to drag someone off their mule passing us and hijack the beast. Going down I was careful not to step in any mule droppings, going up I was doing good just to get a foot in front of the other, so I plodded through many a pile. Then about 2/3 of the way up a thunderstorm hit, it was like the music from Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite. Wind about to blow me off the ledge, lightining strikes all around. Finally make it up and back to the campground and my tent had blown over.