2009 November 21, from Santa Cruz Bay, California Hello, Everybody, I got an airline ticket on my Visa miles to visit Amy and Tom and grandson Lewis in Boston in early December, flying from San Jose CA where I can leave my truck with my friend Joey Tuttle and get a ride to the airport. I decided for once to leave Colorado before the snow started flying, and even leaving in early October, I barely made it out before unseasonably early winter storms moved through. With 7 weeks for what is easily a 2-day trip, I wanted to move leisurely and to spend some time in the 'Arizona Strip', that part of Arizona bordered on the south by the Grand Canyon, and on the north and west by Utah and Nevada - - it perhaps should really be a part of Utah rather than Arizona. In addition to lots of BLM and Forest Service land with many dirt roads to drive and camp on, a major attraction is access to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon at numerous places, and very few people in a large area. (The South Rim gets 90% of the Grand Canyon tourist traffic). And except for hunters, late autumn is not a busy season. The hunter density seemed minuscule compared to what I've seen in Colorado. Another attraction is the chance to see flying California Condors, with a nearly 10 foot wingspan by far the largest birds in North America, and still very rare after near extinction. In 1982 the entire population was down to 22 birds, and a controversial decision was made to capture them all and start a captive breeding program in several zoos. Today the population is well over 300, with around half still in the breeding program and half flying free in Southern California and Northwest Arizona. They are much easier to see in Arizona, since they tend to congregate along the rims of the Grand Canyon, and at the busy South Rim visitor center there are sometimes half a dozen Condors being watched by many dozens of tourists - - it's become a major attraction. With some difficulty I had earlier seen one Condor in California from a distance of nearly a mile, and I was hoping for better in Arizona. The first chick has only recently successfully fledged in the wild, a major hopeful sign. The program has been a real success, but a serious problem still threatens their survival, that of ingesting lead bullet fragments from gut-piles and animals shot by hunters. Each Condor is trapped twice a year and tested for lead, and treated if necessary, and the batteries in the bird's radio replaced. Obviously this sort of intensive and expensive care can not continue indefinitely, and there is hope that the campaign for hunters to switch to all-copper bullets may solve that problem. Near Four Corners, I visited Hovenweap National Monument to see some of the dispersed Anasazi ruins. As I was walking around the trail, I heard a strange croaking noise, and when I put the telephoto lens on a Raven perched nearby I was amazed to see its throat pulsing in time with the noise. After crossing Lake Powell (the dammed Colorado River) on the Hall's Crossing/Bullfrog ferry, a new route for me, I drove the very scenic Burr Trail to Boulder and Escalante, and then the 80 mile primitive Smokey Mountain road south across the Grand Staircase - - Escalante National Monument back to Lake Powell again. Near the Lake, the road drops 1200 feet down the ruggedly spectacular amphitheater of the Kelly Grade, which I've tried to show in a couple of pictures. After camping above Lake Powell in surreal surroundings, I headed over toward the Grand Canyon, and an inquiry at the Lee's Ferry Lodge, an ad hoc Condor center, I was told that the best place to see them was at sunrise and sunset at the Navajo Bridge over the Marble Canyon section of the Grand Canyon. Sure enough, I saw two perched there and was very pleased to be able to photograph them. Next I spent nearly 3 weeks in the Arizona Strip, visiting and camping at around 15 different viewpoints at the edge of the Canyon. I've used Mark Silver's great AllTopo mapping program to try to give an idea of these wanderings, with my GPS track shown against a hill- shaded and elevation false-colored contour map. On this map, the roads at the South Rim can be seen at the lower right corner, and St. George UT is just off the upper left corner. Right after I arrived at the 9,000 foot North Rim visitor station, a winter storm was forecast for 4 inches of snow and 10 degree overnight temperature with 50 knot winds, so I backtracked down to the 5,000 foot desert for a couple of nights to let the storm pass by and was much more comfortable. As I approached one of the viewpoints to camp, I saw a large black bird circling right over my truck only 200-300 feet high - - the white underwing patches identified it unmistakenly as a Condor. I hopped out and was able to get a nice picture of it overhead, an even better bonus after seeing the two perching earlier. While hiking at Toroweap Point, I came around a corner in the rocks and saw another hiker standing at the edge of a ledge above the Canyon, holding a pumpkin - - this was soon after Halloween - - and it wasn't hard to guess what he had in mind. I missed what would have been a great shot of the pumpkin actually going over the edge, but it was still amusing to see this gray-haired guy acting so silly. In the campground at Toroweap I met a young Canadian woman volunteer from the Ranger Station who has a great job - - room and board and a new fueled-up Jeep Rubicon to drive around in, and duties light enough to leave plenty of time to explore the area. She had just returned from teaching English for 5 years in Korea, a nice intrepid soul. She was able to suggest several additional viewpoints for me to visit, with great views and reasonable roads, and several more with bad roads to be avoided. When I arrived at my last viewpoint, Twin Point, I discovered that a Juniper tree branch I was unable to avoid scraping against had popped the window screen out of my camper, and I was hoping to find it lying beside the track when I drove back out. Since I had not seen another vehicle in 3 days, it seemed likely that it might not get run over before I got back to it. When I returned from a hike, I found a Park Law Enforcement Ranger on his very rugged and heavily equipped ATV by my camper, who said he'd found the screen and put it by the track in a safe place - - that was a relief. We had a good time talking before he finally had to move on his patrol rounds. As I drove out, I was watching very carefully for the screen, afraid I might drive right by it, and was very gratified to find it propped in plain view with yellow striped tape around it so I could not miss it. It was finally time to be heading west, across the southern Nevada desert and across the southern Sierra Nevada on a very isolated and twisty but paved Forest Service road, just a few weeks (or less) before snow closed it down for the winter. When I left the Strip, it seemed strange to be camping without a view of the Grand Canyon outside my camper windows! The new slideshow is: 09 10 11 Oct Nov CO UT AZ NV CA Note: this slideshow is larger than usual, you should expect a longer download time. The server address is: http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john (note the tilde ~ before the john part) Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I have used my up-to-date Zone Alarm and SpybotSearch&Destroy to be sure the .exe files are malware free, so you can safely ignore Windows's warning about 'dangerous <.exe> files'. Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture. Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck. If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic to download these large files on a phone line please let me know, as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me know. I periodically remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2009 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the slideshows if they have a Windows computer and broadband internet connection. None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the better. Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com