LA was my landing point for mytrip to visit the canyons. OK so I got used to driving on the other side of the road and OK despite having a GPS it wasn’t easy coming to grips with spaghetti like highway intersections and I was soon lost as we attempted to leave LA and head for Grand Canyon. So I did what sorta comes naturally which was to stop at a petrol (oops sorry gas) station to ask for directions. Simple enough !! can you believe it, the attendant at the first one never heard of the Grand Canyon and the second asked which state it was in.
Eventually I managed to make my way out of San Bernardino and upon arriving at the South Rim immediately understood why the Grand Canyon was so named. For the uninitiated (and I am numbered among them) just remember that you arrive at the top of the Canyon which is a mile high vertically which means the air is thinner and therefore means that unless you are fit, avoid that quick dash as you will rapidly run out of breath.
I made sure that I found a good spot to catch the rising sun and was up bright an early the next morning (6am actually) and quickly made my way to the spot I wanted, walking in the semi darkness and freezing cold as it was already autumn. To my surprise when I arrived at the appointed spot, I found nearly 30 other photographers already gathered there. Never have I been anywhere in Australia where I had to “fight” for space to photograph the rising sun in the morning ever before.
Unfortunately the sunrise pictures did not turn out as I would have wished but this was amply made up by the sunset which I managed to witness from the viewing point called Desert View. For this trip, I had left my Pentax DA 18-55mm MkII zoom lense behind in favour of the Sigma 18-125mm APO zoom lens and it did make life a little easier having the longer focal length range to play with without having to change lenses.
[Pictures taken with Pentax K20D with Sigma 18-125mm APO zoom lens]
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