I first visited the Grand Canyon in 1981, when I drove out to work at
Personal Software. I had always heard people rave about the North Rim as
being superior, though it's a much longer drive from civilization.
You run out of superlatives with the Grand Canyon. Suffice to say that
of the wonders of the natural world I have seen, it ranks second after
a total eclipse of the sun. And it's almost
as hard to capture in a photograph. However, I do think I've come as close
as anybody with my panoramics.
The north rim is higher than the south rim, but that's a tricky statistic.
You can't see the Colorado river itself from most viewpoints on the
north rim. You're mostly looking at side canyons, not the full depth of
the Grand Canyon you see from the south. The river is far away.
We were unable to get a campsite in the national park itself, and you
can't just make your own, but it is OK to do that in the national forest
which surrounds the park. However, late at night the roads are rough,
narrow and unmarked. In many cases all you see are two ruts in the grass
leading off into the darkness from the main road, with no sign of anywhere
to turn around.
GPS to the rescue. While often the GPS may be just a toy, this time it
let us camp. Using the mapping software we could see what jeep trail was
what, where they led and what routes back there were. This allowed us to
drive blind into the forest and set up camp just 100 feet from the edge
of the canyon itself. There were some flaws in the database -- some
things it thought were roads were really trails -- but we would never
have been able to camp this way without it.
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The view from Bright Angel Point
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Bright Angel Viewing Station
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I photograph at Bright Angel Point
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K., lovely at sunset with Bright Angel view behind her
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Exact same shot with me
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Hazy canyon and wispy clouds
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Sunset at Bright Angel
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Part of panorama at Cape Royal
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K. and the vastness of the canyon
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Looking down
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Another view down into a side canyon
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The only view of the Colorado at the North Rim
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Way down
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I shoot my panorama at Cape Royal
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More from the panorama
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Another view of Angel's Window
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Narrow mesa
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