Arizona (and a wee bit of Utah), June 17-25, 2001

Coal Mine Canyon

Coal Mine Canyon is a few miles East of Tuba City AZ. It's a small canyon, but we still spent about 4 hours hiking it.


My friend Nancy, an MD at the Tuba hospital, and my guide for a couple of days in and around the Rez.


Rattlesnakes aren't nearly as loud as they seem in the movies and TV, but this little one gave us a good rattling.


Canyon de Chelly

Canyon de Chelly, also in the Navajo Reservation, is a National Monument and a popular tourist destination. Most of these pictures are from the overlooks, but we took the truck tour down into the Canyon too.



Many Navajo still live at least part of the year in the Canyon and practice seasonal agriculture.


When the rain arrived, I switched to the faster B&W film, which also was better suited to capturing the different shades on the now-wet rocks.


Our driver, Dave.

Monument Valley

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park lies mostly in Arizona, but the entrance is in Utah. It is owned and maintained by the Navajo and also has truck tours, which we took. Our guide, Hank, even sang a traditional Navajo and a traditional Dakota song for us. This is impressive considering that Navajo and Dakota are not even in the same language family.


The Grand Canyon

You may have heard of this. It's fairly well known, especially in Mitteleuropa.


Coming from Monument, I took the Eastern entrance (also known as the "Desert View") and stopped at some of the lesser-visited overlooks and trails.



There were at least four California Condors flying about, two of them flew right over the various buildings near the Bright Angel trail head.


[Left] Although haze (thanks in large part to us Californians and our gas guzzlers) often makes grand sweeping photos impractical, a good foreground object with a wide angle lens can make for a good photo.
[Right] I had hiked a very short section of the Bright Angel trail, and the following day got this good picture of the beginning of the trail.


Meteor Crater and Walnut Creek Canyon

Just outside of Flagstaff, to the East, are the well known Meteor Crater (a private enterprise with a cool museum and a really big hole in the ground) and lesser known, but very cool, Walnut Canyon National Monument.

Red Rock State Park, Sedona

Red Rock State Park is just south of central Sedona and is a really nice little state park. The visitors center is quite informative and they have about 5 miles of trails in and around the creek and surrounding areas.