Tag Archives: Antelope Canyon

Bad Weather Day

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Gloom Despair and Agony On Me, that’s what ran through my mind as I gazed out the window this morning at a despairing gloomy agonizing gray sky. It was cold, the wind was blowing just hard enough to make its way down your collar no matter how far up you had it zipped, and to pile misery on top of woe it was starting to snow. Not the pretty Hallmark kind of snow that you see falling in pre-Starbucks villages, but the icy sleety Chicago kind of snow. The stuff that stuck to your glasses, stung your face and rolled up into drifts that had the density of cured concrete. That is except where you stepped on it and it broke through to submerge your foot to just over your shoe top in sub-zero water.

Then it dawned on me. Oh merde, the weather modification program that we run here at the Institute had shut down. If that intern had forgotten to program the time change into the auto settings again he was going to be out inventorying webworms on the mountain mahogany in his tighty whiteys til his little fuon bwey bweys turned blue.

We developed our weather modification program to please one of our previous assistant directors and after she went on to her well deserved place in the sun we liked it so much we kept it. It isn’t a big deal we just modify the weather that covers about 3-6 thousand acres, just enough to keep the grounds of the Institute under its effects. It ‘s a seasonal program that is tied to the time change and does things like converting really hot days in the summer to a balmy 65 to 70 degrees and turns a day like today into a sunny day with the deepest blue skies you have ever seen. We add just enough cold that you have to wear a down jacket but you don’t have to zip it up if you don’t want to.

That is when it works. It’s 29 degrees out there right now and the wind is blowing cold gray snow around and it certainly isn’t balmy and I’m on my way to check the duty roster to find out which poor unfortunate soul had the watch and didn’t get the job done. They only have a few responsibilities and if I find that this miscreant was into the Everclear while he was on duty, he will wish he had never been born.

One of the results of the WMD (Weather Modification Default) program is that when it goes down it feeds randomly selected images that are the exact opposite in seasonal conditions into the image stream for the blog. So today you get a color burst that’s bright, cheerful and warm looking. It is the lower Antelope Canyon and it was warm. So enjoy it. I know who I need to speak to about this snafu now and I’m off to give him his new assignment. If he’s lucky he’ll live, but I guarantee he’ll remember the time change this spring.

Ambassador from Sirius the Dog Star

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We have gotten tons of letters here at the Institute of Regained Knowledge or IRK as it is affectionately called by our many readers who don’t like to read long names, asking “Why don’t you ever post anything about the ‘Power Centers of the Southwest’ and their role in the aid and assistance of intergalactic transport?” Well it’s funny you should ask because we were going to do just that very thing.

It is a little known fact that IRK  with its COWGFLOP ( Checking Out Weird Guys From Other Low-rent Places) scientific research division has long been involved with and assisted in the various programs by the Government and serious civilian organizations that reach out, assist, promote and monitor travel among the different folks in the Galaxy. We have on our staff several researchers that regularly speak to individuals in different star systems not to mention different dimensions who are much more advanced in their mode of travel than we are and are just looking for a fun place to go on their vacation. Mostly its Vegas but occasionally they want to see the sights. We’ve been accused of being little more than an intergalactic travel agency but we refute such accusations with really vehement denials. After all we have to protect our phony baloney jobs somehow, I mean we  conduct serious research here and will not be slandered.

One of our particularly gifted Adepts or ‘far reaching talkers’ as we prefer to call them regularly communicates with the Ambassador from Sirius, the Dog Star, and they have gotten to be quite good friends, having toured the Mall of America and other cool places together.

What you see above is the actual act of the Ambassador from the star Sirius nearly completing his trans-teleportation using one of the countries most top-secret power center locations. Its sort of like an interdimensional bus stop for the galaxies travelers. Unfortunately due to strict regulations and restrictions set up by our government, the one that’s here to help you, we can not legally divulge its name or location. We can tell you however that it is very near, within a few feet actually, of Upper Antelope Canyon which is just outside of Page, Arizona and is open to the public year round for a small nominal fee. Also any attempt to publish or make money off the exploitation of our galactic friends will result in huge fines, jail time and dismemberment, so we’re pretty darn careful not to do that for sure. Since all you can see is the beginning of his tail starting to become visible from the ‘beaming down’ part of the sequence we feel safe in displaying that much of the process. Plus we haven’t used his name which is unpronounceable in our tongue but  sounds a lot like the answer to that riddle when you ask a dog “What does sand paper feel like?” Or “What’s on top of a house?” We can’t get any more specific than that, see rules and penalties above, but we can say that our interpreter says it means “DownBoy”.

As stated previously we normally do not disclose any facts or itinerary’s regarding our travelers for security reasons but this one fact was leaked by person or persons unknown. (See WickiLeaks entry dated July 12th 2013) The Ambassador is here to spend their national holiday ‘Finding the Golden Bone’ by touring the largest Dog Park in the United States, “DogWood” near Jacksonville, Florida. This place is the DisneyWorld and every other major theme park rolled into one for those of the canine persuasion and the only one of its kind in the whole mapped Cosmos. We are very proud of our American entrepreneurial spirit. We can only hope that the Ambassador has an amazing time and brings back many more of his hairy brethren in the future. We Stand To make a Killing if this takes off, I mean we look forward to promoting good fellowship and intergalactic peace in the future for all species-kind. Happy traveling.

Sandfall

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The Southwest is full of amazing places where the unusual is the norm. This happens to be Antelope canyon and I’m sure you’ve all seen the images of it’s incredible colors and fantastic light beams shining down onto the canyon floor. There are two canyons, the lower where you climb down into the slot canyon and after traveling through it climb back out again and the upper where you walk through it by entering at ground level and continuing through until you walk out the other end. This is the upper canyon and normally there would be light streaming down from the narrow opening in the ceiling of the canyon a hundred feet or more over your head, but on very special occasions when the conditions are just right you get this view, sand, fine as flour sifting down from the dune on the surface when the wind conditions are perfect. It slowly fills the shallow depressions in the rock face until they overflow and you have Sandfall. This not a rare occurrence but it is uncommon as the wind has to be blowing just right, too much  and it blows the sand over the opening and it doesn’t fall in, too slow and the sand doesn’t move at all, and when the wind stops the Sandfall stops. When everything works and it happens and you’re there to see it, it feels like a miracle. Sandfall at Antelope canyon catch it if you can.

Colors, Patterns and Textures in the Southwest

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One of the incredible perks in having a job like mine is you get to see things like this on a regular basis. Sure there are many times where you don’t have the extraordinary light or the stupendous subject matter but then a lot of the time you do. And all you have to do is look at it and take it’s picture. How cool is that? Pretty damn cool actually. This is a shot of Navajo mountain from the Bryce area. What you don’t see in that picture is that it is a little after 6 in the morning early in the spring and it is very cold, like wearing two down jackets cold. At the time I took this it seemed much less glamorous than it does now looking at the end result. Now if that sounds like whining I don’t mean it to, there are just some facts of life about this job that aren’t apparent by looking at the photograph. Frozen fingers and numb toes aside this is a great job and I don’t ever want to stop doing it. I may wear three down coats next time however. And some gloves.

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Colors, Patterns and Textures is the name for this post and it has been the hardest to put together because of the difficulty in choosing images for it. This presentation could easily be several thousand pictures, if not more, long. The reason it isn’t is because I know that as much as you like looking at gorgeous images I’d lose you at about six hundred so I’ve decided to abbreviate this post and repeat it with different images every so often. This is a wall at Aztec Ruins National Monument built by the inhabitants when this place was occupied. Now whoever designed and built this wall knew what beauty was about. There is no architectural reason to use a row of the most beautiful blue colored rocks here but after seeing it could you have used anything else?

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The color of the sand, the texture, the play of shadows on the ripples of this small section of the dunes in Monument Valley is every bit as intriguing as the buttes, towers and monolithic rock formations that make up this world Heritage place.

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Simple patterns can be visually satisfying. This tree against an unadorned wall in Santa Fe has a zen-like attraction. The intense colors, while arresting in their contrast, can have a soothing effect and show that a small piece of the total view can be more rewarding than showing the whole picture (so to speak).

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While similar in composition to the image above, this scene also taken in Santa Fe, shows a more muted color palette. Same type of view but different light and time of day. You could stand in front of a composition like this for days and never take the same image twice.

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While walking through the dunes in Monument Valley after watching the sunrise you see all the details and patterns of this spectacular country begin to emerge. A desert newspaper recording the comings and goings of the creatures of the night. The tracks of a small mammal are crisscrossed with trails of insects and the morning light turns the color of the sand to a deep rich red. I take a lot of pictures but I think I take more of them here than any other place.

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You can begin to understand why artists like Georgia O’Keefe painted the subjects she did when you come across a pattern like this one momentarily displayed in the sand. I say momentarily because the next breeze to blow through here will erase this work of art in a heartbeat. That is unless you take a picture of it.

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Other patterns are created by man and will last for centuries. These petroglyphs are on a cliffside in Capitol Reef National Park.

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Texture plays a large part in my selection of things to shoot. Here the frozen sand has been turned to rock and although it looks like momentary waves in a sand dune it is here to stay. This is Antelope Canyon in Arizona and this dune is nearly a hundred feet under ground. The light comes from an opening in it’s ceiling that runs the length of the canyon.

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Waves of stone. How were they frozen in time? It certainly looks like that was what happened but this scene was slowly created over eons by the water that occasionally pours through this canyon. It is mind numbing to think of how long this must have taken. The result however is etched forever in my memory.