ARIZONA,OR GO WEST NOT SO YOUNG MAN

so it's thursday in williams, the original plan was to ease on down the road to sedona, perhaps hit maine control point again, see if early light was less on the nose, but that all went out the window when the forecast of sunny came true, up the road 60 miles to the grand canyon, it's a pretty fast drive, wide open road, 65 mile speed limit almost all the way, and today had no backed up traffic to enter the park. parked near the bookstore, grabbed a shuttle bus and started hitting the vistas, first up yaki point



and now for something completely different, a black & white conversion

and working east to west on the orange shuttle, pipe creek vista



back near the visitors center and bookstore area, mather point



over on my smugmug site i have 18 photos from mather point, it's got quite a large and multilevel viewing area, and you can take many different angled photos

 

now i am using the car, the red shuttle route, hermits rest, does not run in the winter, so the next series is from me driving and stopping at a number of vistas west of the grand canyon village area. first up, some shots from the maricopa point area, which is also where i saw the elk, 4 of them together.

looking towards bright angel lodge, and some of the bright angel trail can be made out, there were in fact people on the trail, it looked icy from where i was, i they have to use crampons, to walk the trail in winter.

another elk shot

 

so all the way west on south rim road, to hermits rest, someday i will have to come back when the red shuttle route is running and do all the vistas and then have a picnic lunch at hermits rest, they have some picnic tables in a little grove of trees, and a small gift shop





and i caught a couple of ravens in flight, not a birds in flight attempt, purely by chance. i was in the gift shop and someone asked about the ravens, they are very common in the grand canyon area, and there is a pair that has stayed all winter for several years at hermits rest



no extra charge for the redhead, again i need to pay more attention to the background, i was so happy that i got a minute without asians draped all over the rock that i just grabbed the shot without any other considerations.

and this is actually called the abyss

 

so in early afternoon i headed out back down 64, picked up a sub and went trackside at maine control point, watched a couple of trains go by while eating then on down the highway to sedona, pulling into my hotel around 4pm, get my room, put my luggage in and got somewhat settled, then on out the door and since the hotel was right on north airport drive, straight across 89 and right on up the hill to airport mesa, where there already was a crowd assembling, but not so thick i couldn't get my tripod set up. it wasn't a spectacular sunset as there was a small amount of high cirrus, but not too bad. the airport commission has a money maker going, they own the parking lot across from the overlook and they have a self pay kiosk for the $3.00, stick the receipt on your dashboard. overlooking downtown sedona, straight across is coffee pot, far right, chimney rock on the far left.

coffee pot,, called that because of the reference to it being shaped like an old stovetop percolater, probably what made my first taste of the liquid of life, a little closer here, i changed to the 70-300 at this point


got a little bit of golden light on coffee pot

and the lights are coming on in sedona in the blue hour

 

i stayed at the best western plus in west sedona, the room had 2 doors, the back door opened onto a great big terrace shared with all the rooms on the 3rd floor, and this was the view friday morning, at 7:19 am, not too bad a view




so get on up and out, breakfast in the hotel, which was pretty good by the way. chorizo in the eggs. and get on out and navigate to crescent moon picnic area, where later tonight i hope to catch a striking sunset on cathedral rock, this is not cathedral, it is the view back out over the parking area


i may have posted the above already, this next one is from the viewing area right outside the entrance to chapel of the holy cross, which i did post earlier


and what appears to be a private residence on the road up to the chapel, you go right by those gates, somebody with some serious money likes sedona, update, house built and owned by dr loan cosmescu, inventor of the lasik eye surgery laser. started in 2003, completed in 2008, 8600 sq ft, has it's own observatory on the roof

another from just outside the chapel

no masses scheduled, and the crowd was light when i was there, so i went inside, and off to the side at the back of the chapel, set up and was able to grab a few shots, and this is probably the best of them, very hard with the sunlight coming through those big floor to ceiling windows

statuary on the grounds, that's not sensor boogers up on the top edge, i could not crop out those without losing too much of the red rock background

some of the local flowering cacti down on the access road


back out on the road, up schnebly hill the road, the 1 mile paved section, to munds mountain trailhead

down into where the creek flows during monsoon season, still at munds mountain trailhead


pretty much 180 degree pivot left from the above, sedona has a lot of places like this, really nice scenery shots in 2 or 3 different directions

 

it's now getting on towards high sun, so back into sedona, to stop at the tlaquepaque arts and crafts village, a shopping center done up in sonoran adobe village style, some neat jewelry and art shops, i wandered around and took a few photos and then went into a mexican restaurant for lunch, again good food. after that back to the hotel for a break, and out again in late afternoon

strangely enough mark twain made an appearance, not sure if he ever was in sedona, although back then he made a lot of money making personal appearances to tell stories and sell books, the early version of a book signing tour

and some whimsical art

and albert einstein shows up, although i would have thought it more likely he was in new mexico with the manhattan project

 

so late afternoon. am back out, to bell rock, where i notice it's starting to cloud over, very thin at this time but starting to effect the light a bit



i believe this is courthouse butte, and this concludes our arizona adventure, there are of course a few more shots over on my phanfare site, but i posted quite a few here, pretty lengthy for only a 6 day trip, unfortunately those clouds increased fast enough that by 5:30 it was obvious that there would be no stunning sunset on cathedral rock this night, so i went on back to the hotel, packed for flight, made another post here, and put away the laptop, as the next morning i had to hit the road by 8:00 am to get to phoenix, return the car and be gate side for a 1:10 flight to jfk . which turned out to be a pretty good travel day, i was able to upgrade to business premium, the flight landed a little early, that class of seat gets their luggage first, i was able to make an earlier train, karen picked me up in ronkonkoma and i was home by 10:15 pm.

 

BUMP, i did it, i finally got a photo accepted by rail pictures.net. photo of the week was a photo i instantly recognized, the double header at sunset on day 2, so i said why not, i will submit something, give it another shot, finally after about 30 tries, i got one accepted, i know, i know, that and 1.25 will get you a cup of coffee, but it does feel like a little bit of redemption. so here again is the accepted photo, ID 608150, after i got the acceptance email, of course i went looking, screeners must have been working overtime tonight, i just submitted it this afternoon and it's already about 7 pages back in the newest first search order

 

Well done Gary! Who cares about the cup of coffee! Congrats!!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Congrats!

 

You can still get it here: http://www.retroplanet.com/PROD/32842.html
~Joanie

 

The alco A&B unit is such a looker and the shot on the bottom of the Grand Canyon is perfect!

~Joanie