Photographs by Frank

The genesis of this road trip began about three years ago, when Bernice Lewis (a singer-songwriter from Williamstown, MA) mentioned at the end of a concert, that she was organizing a raft trip down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. We did not think twice before saying “Sign us up!”.

The trip had a musical flavor. We traveled with guitars, ukuleles and other makers of joyful noise. Music was made each evening and a few times at stops during the day. Songs were sung most of the time and more than a few verses of, mostly doggerel, lyrics were composed while floating the river.

The rafts, guides, etc. were provided by Arizona Rafting Adventures (AZRA) out of Flagstaff, AZ. The two rafts were large motorized craft. They accommodated 29 folks, including the guides, and everything we needed (or wanted) for ten days.

One thing the rafts were not… dry! We were damp (or soaked) for most of the day while on the river. All part of the adventure!

Our guides (Jeb, Dennis, Kelly and Bert) kept us safe. entertained. educated and well fed. Thank you all.

The service provided by AZRA and our guides was first-rate. Highly recommended.

During they day, while on the water, I made relatively few photographs. The light was poor (harsh and high) and my little cameras batteries gave out some time on day four. Most of my “river photos” were made in camp, either early-ish in the morning or late in the afternoon, as we made camp for the night. The real “golden hour” light (just after sunrise or just before sunset) that landscape photographers love never reaches to the river st the bottom of a canyon. Although I knew this going in, it still took some getting used to when actually there at the bottom of the canyon.

I was most interested in making photographs showing the river in the main canyon…

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Some days, we made mid-day stops to hike side canyons…

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Sometimes the light at the “local rim” was too interesting to pass up…

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Here are some photos I made while actually on the rafts….

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Even though the colors in the canyon border on fantastical, I made some black and white photos…

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While we were at the North Rim, we camped at the Demotte Campground, a nice quiet spot, in Kaibab National Forest, about 20 miles north of the park entrance. Most mornings we headed into the park early and stayed until the light faded. One day we explored the rim overlooks accessible via the National Forest roads.

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We are back from our 2018 road trip!

We headed west on Labor Day and arrived home on Sunday… five weeks and 6940 miles total. We pulled our little teardrop camper and spent most nights camping.

The centerpiece of the trip was the Grand Canyon. We spent five days at the North Rim and then ten days rafting the Colorado River from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek (more about this in another post). Both before and after the Grand Canyon, we stopped at a number of other national parks and monuments.

On the way west, we spent four  days (three nights) on the interstate system before hitting the local roads somewhere west of Albuquerque, NM and heading for Canyon de Chelly National Monument along the Arizona-New Mexico border in the four corners area.

We arrived at Canyon de Chelly in the late afternoon and camped there for two nights. This was our standard  operating mode for most stops, giving me two late afternoons/evenings and two mornings for photography when the sun is low(ish) in the sky.

From Canyon de Chelly, we headed to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we spent four nights camped in the National Forest campground just north of the park. From the North Rim, we headed to Flagstaff (and one night in a motel) to meet up with the folks we would be rafting with.

Early the next morning (15 Sept.) we were on the AZRA* bus headed for the put-in at Lee’s Ferry. We spent the next ten days floating the river and being well tended to by the guides. The take-out was on the morning of the 24th. After another bus ride (back to Flagstaff) and another night in a motel (with hot showers!), we were ready for the rest of our trip.

We did not get too far on the first day, post-raft trip… only to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments, twenty or twenty-five miles north of Flagstaff, where we camped for one night.

From there we headed for Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah (for two nights) then, with a quick daytime stop at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, to Capitol Reef National Park (two nights). Next it was on to Hovenweep National Monument (two nights) with another quick stop at Natural Bridges National Monument on the way. After Hovenweep we headed to Mesa Verde National Park (two nights) and Great Sand Dunes National Park (one night) in southwestern Colorado, before deciding to find Interstate 70 and head home.

Of course, I took some photographs along the way….  3263 exposures total to be exact! I have spent much time since we returned home editing this mass down to 495 frames (i.e. 15% of the total) which I “developed”. I then made a second pass at editing and have 182 photos (5.6% of the total) which will appear here on the blog. Hopefully, this is a small enough number that no one will fall asleep during the slide show!

Thus, to begin, here are the photos from Canyon de Chelly; more (from other places) will follow in subsequent posts.

Color Work

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Black and White Work

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*AZRA — Arizona Rafting Adventures (more about them in a later post)

Part 2 >