And why I didn’t finish this post right after I started it.
I’m at the Grand Canyon. Again.
I come here 20 to 30 times a year, often on helicopter charters. This time, I’m taking a couple from Montana on a Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. That’s a 6-day/5-night excursion. The second day (and night) is spent at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
A fisheye view of my room at the Bright Angel Lodge. Simple and relatively cheap.
As usual, I have one of the tiny rooms in the Bright Angel Lodge. The historic lodge and cabin buildings were designed by Mary Colter and built in the early 1900s. My room lacks the features most guests take for granted: television, air conditioning, and shower. I don’t need the first two and the third is down the hall.
I lucked out this trip and wound up with a corner room that has windows on two sides. There’s even a window in the bathroom. But best of all, it’s literally 100 feet from the rim of the canyon. In fact, if I look out one of my windows, I can see the wall of the North Rim 10 or 15 miles away.
Not bad for $80 a night.
My passengers are staying at the Thunderbird Lodge, with a partial view of the canyon. Their room is modern and has all amenities. It also cost $180 per night.
A shot taken in passing on my way to lunch today. The clouds were great; they really added depth to the scene.
This trip, for some reason, is different than the others. I didn’t feel at all motivated to walk along the rim and shoot pictures. I think I’m tired of photographing the Grand Canyon. Is that possible?
I have hundreds of photos of this place. But none of them can really capture its magnificence. Every time I try, I’m disappointed. I feel that it’s time to stop trying.
So I spent most of the afternoon in my hotel room, pulling movies off SD cards to clear them for more movies, catching up on Twitter and e-mail, and putting a few videos online. By 5 PM, I realized that I was avoiding my photographic duties. And that made me wonder why I considered taking photos a “duty.” Almost as if it were a chore. Was it?
I sat down to write this post. I entered the title in my offline editor. And then I stopped and scolded myself.
No, I was not going to miss a beautiful Grand Canyon sunset. I was going to get my ass outside and walk along the rim. I didn’t have to take photos, but I could if I wanted to. It was more important to be outside, in the fresh air, on a beautiful late summer afternoon with one of the world’s Natural Wonders in front of me.
So I went outside with my camera. Less than a minute later, I was on the Rim near the Lookout Studio, admiring the way the late afternoon sunlight played on the buttes and canyon walls right in front of my face.
There were lots of other people out there. Most were moving about, snapping photos along the way. Many spoke in languages other than English. They were all ages, although I can’t say I noticed any school-age kids.
El Tovar, in the late afternoon light.
I noticed an artist sitting on a rock with an easel in front of him. This week is the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art: Plein Air Event & Modern Masters Show. The artist, Sedona-based Williamson Tapia, was using oils to paint his interpretation of the cliff on which El Tovar Hotel sits and the magnificent clouds above it. His piece was mostly clouds.
We chatted for a while about art and the Canyon as I watched the light change. The red light and deep shadows behind the buttes were calling me. I excused myself, ducked through Lookout Studio to the cliffside overlooks below it, and snapped a few photos.
A look into the Grand Canyon in the light of the setting sun. The dark and hazy canyon is Bright Angel Canyon.
I shot RAW + JPEG Fine. I don’t usually shoot RAW. I’m hoping that I can learn more about it and use it to make better photos. I figure that I can’t learn more about RAW unless I have some photos to work with. So today was the day to start collecting them. The JPEG Fine will give me some thing easy to play with until I’m ready to work with the RAW format images.
When I was finished, I went back. Will claimed I’d given him good luck; that he’d found his style for the painting. We chatted some more as he worked. I watched him paint the green bushes and trees on the cliff below the hotel and then touch up the clouds with bright white tops and lavender gray bottoms. The light got softer and redder, but it didn’t affect his work; he was painting something completely different, something he saw. Onlookers came and went, admiring his work. None lingered. We continued to talk, agreeing (among other things) that one day a week, there should be no television broadcasts.
Finally, the light faded to the point that he couldn’t continue his work. He stepped aside and I got a good look at it. He told me he’d put it in the fridge back where he was staying so the oil would stay pliable. If those clouds were back the next day, he’d continue working on it to finish it.
We exchanged cards, shook hands, and went our different ways. I came right back to my room to finish the blog post I’d started with a title two hours before.
Now, as I listen to the crickets outside my window, I wish I’d spent the day outdoors, exploring some new part of the Rim.
Remember Greg from 
We watched the July 4 fireworks from East Wenatchee. Wenatchee puts on a good show from Walla Walla Point Park on the river. We were right across the river from there, all comfy with our good cameras. I got some decent shots, but I don’t think I’ve put them online yet.
Okay, so it’s a washing machine.
On July 10, Mike and I celebrated 26 years together. For the second year in a row, we celebrated it apart. These are the flowers he sent me.
This is a failed attempt at stealth photography. You know — when you photograph someone without them knowing you’re doing it. I obviously need a lot of practice.
This is the best reason I can think of for avoiding a bridal shower. Give me a break! I don’t like anybody enough to wear a getup like this in public.
One of the things I did to fill the time between rain showers — and let me tell you, there was lots of that time — was revise my Leopard book for Snow Leopard. Since I do layout on my Visual QuickStart Guides, I brought along my 24-inch iMac (left). I also bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro (right) to run the Snow Leopard software on. These two computers, along with the usual collection of junk I seem to accumulate, filled my workspace, which was my camper’s dining table.
Part of my equipment for drying cherries is an 82-gallon fuel tank that I keep filled with 100LL fuel. That’s the kind of fuel my helicopter takes. The tank, which is mounted on my husband’s pickup truck this year, has an electric pump so I can do off-airport refueling. This saves time and money when I have to dry.
I really do hate the Wal-Mart in Wenatchee. One reason is the checkout lines. Not only are they long, but they’re confusing — they’re set up like flag lots and you never know what side to check out on. They’re also lined with more crap ready for impulse buyers. And they have televisions playing ads all the time. Televisions I can’t seem to shut off with my 
Another trip to Blustery’s for another Logger Burger. This time I had it with sweet potato fries. I wrote a little about this visit 
Would I be dating myself if I admitted to seeing Tommy in a movie theater when it first came out? (Yeah, I thought so.)
Jim and I flew down to an orchard near Othello, WA to meet another pilot and attend a party. Since we both wanted to fly, we took two helicopters.
When you see two guys working on a power pole outside your door with a pair of clippers, you should not be surprised if the power fails immediately afterward.
One of the first things I did when I arrived at the golf course RV park in June was to retrieve the planter I’d bought the previous summer and plant tomatoes, basil, rosemary, and some flowers in it. The tomatoes were just starting to ripen when it was time to go.
This is the honkin’ huge cloud that formed over the Waterville Plateau about 20-30 miles north of my position. You should have seen it on radar. The thunderstorm moved northeast to Electric City and the Grand Coulee Dam, wreaking havoc along the way.
This is my landing zone at the Wenatchee orchard where I’m finishing up the cherry drying season. I’m parked between a dirt road and a pond in a clearing used as a staging area for cherry picking equipment. One skid is slightly lower than the other; it’s a bit of a slope. I was supposed to park on the other side of the pond, but they’d stacked cherry boxes there. All I could think of was the forklifts and seasonal labor pool moving those boxes around right next to my huge investment. So I parked on the other side of the pond where I thought there would be less activity.
Imagine a long, low dam across a wide river. Now imagine a walkway across the top of that dam. Both sides of the walkway have concrete walls about chest high. And on top each wall is a fat metal rail running the whole length of the wall.