Well today didn't go as planned. When I got up this morning it was raining and of course Antelope canyon was unsafe to enter. The forecast is for rain and flash floods for the rest of today and possibly tomorrow.

So after going over my maps and guide books I decided to go out to the north rim of the Grand Canyon for the day and then come back to Page. If it rained tomorrow then I would head off to the south rim and then figure out whether to come back to Page again or just head off to New Mexico for my last remaining days. Page is half way between the north and south rims so it was an Ok place to spend the night.

It took me about 2 hours to get to the north rim, a really nice drive. I've never been to the Grand Canyon before so I really didn't know what to expect. The drive out there passes through a national forest with lush green pine trees and alpine meadows. I expected it to be more desert like, but the north rim of the canyon is at about 8200 feet above sea level and more forest like than desert like.

I've seen plenty of pictures of the Grand Canyon before and while I thought they were cool and all I really didn't expect it to be as impressive as it was. I don't think you can really appreciate this until you actually go there. It is so immense and so beautiful and really, really deep. The colors there are really vibrant and they change from moment to moment as the sun crosses the sky. It was cloudy and rainy there, but I expected this given the storm that was over Page. But there were the magical moment of sun breaking through the clouds.

I got a picture from near Bright Angel point. It took me a while but I think it will be a good one. In taking the picture I was standing only about 2 feet from the edge of the canyon. Below was an almost shear drop all the way to the bottom. It was early and there were some clouds rolling in to I decided to go into the lodge and get something to eat and wait for sunset. The lodge here is one of the cooler ones I've seen, right up there with the lodges of Mt. Hood and Death Valley.

After this I drove out to Cape Royal, one of the farthest points on the north rim that you can drive out onto. It took me about a 1/2 hour to get there and when I did there was a big dark cloud hanging right over the canyon. I waited it out in the car going over my maps and trying to plan the next couple of days. About 1/2 - an hour later the storm cloud was lifting so I grabbed the camera and head for the point.

As I headed for the point I stopped at few of the lookouts along the way, most notably the natural window. I didn't really feel like getting a picture of it, at least not without seeing the view from the point first. About 50 feet from the point I happened to look over the left edge (the west side) and saw this amazing sight forming. There was this valley below with gentle rolling hill surrounded by step buttes on all sides. Above the sun was setting as clouds shifted in front of it. The remarkable thing about this was what the light was doing. There were deep shadows being cast between the hills on the valley below and the steep buttes where mostly in the shadows as well. The sun was shining through the clouds in such a way that it formed these visible rays of light that were lighting the tops of the hills in the valley and the edges of some of the buttes. The effect it had was that the valley looked as if it was glowing. I heard several people talking about it later that it had this almost eerie feel to it. It was one of the truly magical moments that if you're in the right place at the right time you're lucky to see. It's the type of scene that famous pictures come from.

I knew I only had a few brief moments to get it to I jumped down on the rocks near the edge and set up the camera as quickly as I could. Since it was sunset and I was facing the sun it made it really hard to focus the camera and I knew I couldn't spend a lot of time doing it so I got it the best I could. I wasn't sure that the camera was focused on everything in the scene, but I knew that at least the central valley was in focus and with that I could get a decent print from that part. The other thing that made it tough was that I was facing the sun and the contrast range of the light was far too great for what film can capture so I had to quickly decide what parts where important and what parts I could let go off the scale. Again I picked the exposure settings that would render the central valley with good detail. By this time, about 3-5 minutes had gone by and a crowd of people were behind me. Then I just started taking shots. I was working so fast that I barely had time to take my usual notes.

It only lasted like that for less than 10 minutes and after I got what I wanted I started to re-write my notes so I would have the details of what choices I made. Most of the people had moved on by now as well. I decided to re-check the focus of the camera now that I had more time and what I found out was that things were in pretty good shape. I may have some near areas in the bottom of the frame that are out of focus but they can easily just be cropped out. Also the sky and clouds will most likely be rendered completely white but this wasn't the really interesting part anyway. All in all I think I might just get a good picture out of it.

The sun was behind a large cloud at that point and I had thought that any picture taking was over for the day. I walked out to the point anyway to just look around and while I was looking at the east rim the sun poked out and set the very top edge of the rim on fire. It didn't even last long enough for me to set up the tripod and then it was gone. Now I really figure that it was over for the day. I started to talk with some people about my camera and about what was going on down in the valley below just a few minutes earlier. While we were talking there was large butte behind them to the south that all of a sudden just lit up like it was on fire. I broke the conversation mid-sentence and started to set up. I got further this time, all the way to starting to focus the camera and while I was looking through the ground glass it just melted away. Too slow again.

The way back to Page was a little interesting as well. It's a fairly long drive out of the park and I was following this other car down the highway. At one point the car in front abruptly slowed down. At first I couldn't tell what was going on and then I say the big mule dear dancing about on the side of the road. He was clearly confused and it was really hard to tell whether or not he was going to jump in front of a car or not. He didn't though. Then a few miles later the car in front of me came very quickly to nearly a complete stop. At the time we were doing about 70 mph. As the distance between us closed I decided to give my self a little more stopping room and pull over to the left of the car in front of me. Just as I did I saw the rear end of a very large cow in front of me. I drove over even more left, now completely in the next lane and just then the cow turn his head around and as I whisked past him he wag his tail and dusted the side window of my car with a soft thud. I was doing about 15 mph at that point. Someone really should make those things wear reflectors.

I came away from this area with the total sense of amazement. I never knew that light could do that. I could spent a month here just waiting for those little 30 second chances are capturing something that magical. All in all a good day even though I didn't make it to the slot canyons.