At Lees Ferry
The Colorado River starts as a tiny stream on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, high in Colorado. With snow melt, rainfall, and tributaries feeding it, it becomes the massive river that carved the Grand Canyon and many of the lesser-known canyons in Utah’s Canyonlands.
Once a free-flowing river, the Colorado has been dammed several times. The Hoover Dam not far from Las Vegas in the 1930s and the Glen Canyon Dam not far from Page in the 1960s created two of the world’s largest man-made lakes: Lake Mead and Lake Powell (my personal favorite). Other smaller dams downstream from Hoover created numerous smaller lakes for water storage and recreation. Sadly, very little (if any) water from the Colorado makes it to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico these days. The southwest’s need for water has seen to that.
This photo was taken at Lees Ferry, which was once the site of a ferry service to cross the Colorado River. Before Navajo Bridge was built to cross the river at Marble Canyon nearby, this was the only river crossing for hundreds of miles in either direction. (The new Navajo Bridge is one of only two crossings for hundreds of miles; to the southwest, the next crossing is at the Hoover Dam, hundreds of miles downstream, on the other side of the Grand Canyon.) Situated several miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, the site is a popular starting point for river runners on trips down the Colorado.
The water here, although fast moving, is relatively calm. The dam regulates water flow, changing the depth of the water on a daily cycle. The water is icy cold — I know, having taken a dip it in more than once — since it comes from the bottom of the dam. The area is also popular for fly fishing and for smooth-water boat trips between the dam and Lees Ferry.
The red cliffs you see in the photo are the Vermillion Cliffs north of Marble Canyon. Their beauty in early morning light cannot be understated. If you’re a pilot in the southwest, consider flying into its narrow strip. There’s a restaurant and lodge there. I wrote about it in my blog article, “Breakfast in Winslow — No, Page — No, Marble Canyon.”
Our trip to Florida started in Fort Myers. We can’t fly direct from Phoenix to that airport so we flew Continental and stopped over in Houston. We arrived late at night, rented a car (can you believe they gave me a PT Cruiser?), and drove to our first host’s house on Marco Island, about 60 miles south. Will is Mike’s former partner (now retired) and Annette is his wife, who was also the bookkeeper for the company. He sold the company a few years back and the buyer bought out Mike’s share. Will and Annette bought a home on Marco Island, right on one of the many canals there. We got to stay in one of their guest rooms.
We wound up staying there for four nights, which I think is the most number of nights we’d ever stayed at someone’s house. It was very comfortable. Each day, we’d do something different — breakfast at the country club followed by a walk on the beach and a visit to 
On Thanksgiving morning, Mike and I took a walk around St. Augustine, which I believe is the oldest city in the U.S. Lots of great architecture. This photo shows Flagler College.
The next day was my Stepdad’s 70th birthday. We’d done all our celebrating the night before, so there wasn’t anything special planned. On our way back from Orlando to St. Augustine, we stopped at 
This photo shows the view from my hotel room window, taken from ground level. What you’re seeing is a marina, with some covered slips, on a peninsula of land on the northwest end of the city. There’s a wonderful walking/biking/skating trail that goes around the peninsula, and I had the pleasure of biking its length one evening.
This gate and corral was on one of the roads I followed near the railroad tracks before I got into the National Forest. Nearby were the remains of a few buildings. It had once been part of a train station where cattle had been loaded onto cattle cars and shipped south for sale and slaughter. Now it’s just a picturesque spot on a remote dirt road, captured with my camera during a Jeep outing with my dog.
The stone tower, which dates back to the 1870s, stands near the top of a hill in upper Manhattan, in area that’s part of Washington Heights. It overlooks the Harlem River and, from its roof, it’s likely that you can see a good part of the Bronx, Queens, the Long Island Sound, and Long Island beyond. Anyone driving on the Cross Bronx Expressway between the George Washington Bridge and either the Throgs Neck or Whitestone Bridges will see it as they leave or enter Manhattan. Nearby is what remains of High Bridge, the oldest bridge in New York.