This trip was originally to have started at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes near Kanab, Utah, but we decided to head down to the Toroweap Overlook of Grand Canyon National Park instead. It's quite remote, very undeveloped and there's not a guard rail in sight. One can imagine Grand Canyon as it was before it was named - raw, undisturbed and quiet.

I'll have this page displaying the photographs I took during our safari, but if you click on Heather or Sandi you will be able to see their photographs, read some of their thoughts, and view the safari through the eyes of a client. It is, after all, the opportunities that abound for them (and you!), that make these trips so exciting. Showcasing our clients work will be a major part of what we do from now on in these Safari Journals. We hope you enjoy seeing our safari participant's work also.

Read Part II of my adventures in Escalante HERE.

Sandi decided she wanted to break in her Nikon D100 in by photographing the fluttering US flag.

Interesting to all of us that we only saw them in one isolated area near the summit.

UPDATE: Sandi went home and properly identified this little gem of a flower. It is the Prairie Verbena.

Glandularia bipinnatifida var. bipinnatifida (=Verbena ambrosiifolia; Verbena bipinnatifida; Verbena ciliata). DAKOTA MOCK VERBENA. Annual or perennial. Reported from Yavapai, Coconino, and Apache counties [McD, V. ambrosiifolia]; found or reported in Yavapai, Coconino, Navajo, and Apache counties, 5000-10,000 feet [McD, V. bipinnatifida]; throughout region at 2000-7000 feet [McD, V. ciliata].

http://www.nazflora.org/Verbenaceae.htm

There was some weather moving in and the sunset shots were pretty bland until the sun dipped below the horizon. That's when the clouds started to get lit and things got visually interesting very quickly.

I was busy cooking dinner but had to grab my Nikon D1x for a quick campground shot. Handheld at about a 10th of a second, it was all I had time for. Luckily I had the 17-35 f 2.8 lens on (one of my favorites).

I couldn't resist, but this shot resulted in the roasted garlic being sacrificed on the grill.

After a show like we had that night, no one was missing the roasted garlic.

Since the group was so small I decided to put each guest in their own tent for the entire trip. Here we have three Mountain Hardware tents set up, and had the rain flys handy - just in case.

As we ate dinner we could see quite the lightning storm to the NorthEast, which is where we would have been camping had we headed to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. We were glad we were able to stay dry that night.

I got up in the middle of the night to check the sky and the lightning storm was still quite active.

Those heavy rains would alter our trip quite dramatically.

Toroweap is a wonderful location to see the Grand Canyon, mainly because it is so remote. Save for a few permanent campsites which are usually packed in summer, and a commode, there's nothing there to tell you that you're even in a National Park.

This view is looking toward the SouthWest, and you can see in the shadows coming in from the right two seperate lava flows. This region of Utah and Arizona was very volcanic, and cindercones and lava flows are quite abundant. These two lava flows actually dammed the Colorado river backing up water for miles. An interesting juxtoposition considering we were going to be seeing Glen Canyon Dam later on in the day.

Toroweap is a journey not for the faint of heart. Even though there is a pretty decent road in and out, if you are not completely prepared to take care of yourself, you must accept the consequences.

Fortunately we always are and travel to remote areas like this in confidence in our abilities and in the equipment.

More times than not we have helped others who did not go in quite as equipped as we were.

The striped buttes are especially rich and vibrant in this canyon. There are other places in the area where these stripes occur, but this is the most vivid and plentiful display.

The Pariah river meanders through these badlands and enters a narrow canyon that is a very popular hike.

An old settlement used to be in this canyon but repeated flooding and attatcks by local Indians forced the settlers out. A very small cemetary is located in the canyon but is difficult to find.

We had some time to kill in the afternoon so we spent some time at the Glen Canyon Dam Visitor's Center, walked around Page a bit and then went to a little draw to photograph just south of town.

You can see that there is some severe weather coming in from the left of the photograph (looking southwest), and our afternoon hike was cut short due to lightning that was very close and the threat of heavy rain (dark clouds = heavy rain).

We had fun, but had anticipated hiking a bit further. I don't like to argue with Mother Nature, so when she says move, we do.

Not long after this we decided that the lightning was a little too close and headed for Page.

Originally we had planned on camping north of Lake Powell near Alstrom Point that evening, but the threat of heavy rain nudged us closer and closer to a hotel where we found ourselves staying for the night.

We had planned on having our hotel stay in Escalante a little nearer the end of our trip, but we decided to err on the side of dryness instead.

Slot canyons are created by turbulent swift moving water carrying a lot of sediment, and the conditions were ripe for Canyon X to be filled with water and pose a serious hazard to anyone venturing in. I met with Jackson Bridges who was to be our guide that morning, and he said that any entry into Canyon X was off. So we went back to the hotel, looked over some maps and as I stepped outside to look at the weather Harley Klemme drove up in his truck.

Harley is the outfitter in Page who runs tours into Canyon X, and he wanted to stop by to see how we were doing. He suggested heading into Monument Valley, that he thought we'd get better weather down there, so we took his advice. It's nice to have friends like Harley and Jackson looking out for you.

I didn't shoot much in Monument Valley, the light was pretty dead, but the scenery was still spectacular. We wanted to camp this evening, and we still had to setup camp on the north side of Lake Powell, so we headed back to Page.

The dog that was guarding the herd hurried them off when it saw Sandi and Heather approaching.

Shot with my 300 2.8 and D1x.

To get to Alstrom Point you need to cross Wahweap Creek, and with all of the recent rains, what is normally just a trickle was a pretty good running stream about 2 1/2 feet deep and 30 yards across. The water was moving pretty good, about as fast as you can walk before you start running.

I'd been across that streambed a dozen times before and knew that the river channel doesn't really change regardless of how much water goes through there. It never gets dug out badly and the channel is very wide and flat.

I didn't see anything in the water to make me nervous, so we put the CrewCab in low-range, 2nd gear and locked the differentials and in we went.

A few nervous heartbeats later we emerged from the other side none the worse for wear.

The U.S. Departnent of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey has placed markers of various significance around the landscape. To the right of the photograph you can see a small concrete plug where there is a marker embedded. The sign says 'please do not remove'.

This area does not recieve that much annual rainfall, and careless visitors who leave the main road leave tire tracks in the soft dirt that will last for years.

Fortunately the deeper you go into the backcountry on this road the less you see the evidence that results from uneducated off-road enthusiasts.

We got some decent light as we traveled down this road, unfortunately the skies grew thick and the clouds never lit up from below.

We got in the truck and headed out to where we wanted to photograph near Gunsight Butte. A short 10 minute drive got us out near Romana Mesa overlooking Lake Powell before sunrise.

Here she is out on a point overlooking Lake Powell.

Please don't step off the edge Sandi...please!

Heather's mantra that week was 'gotta download again'. I think she must have shot 10 gigs worth of .NEF's!

Gunsight Pass is the saddle in the rock in the center of the frame near the top.

You see a lot of automobile advertising being shot from the south side of the lake looking north. The Navajo Nation has an active film commision and is quite lenient when approached about using their land in commercials and movies.

One of the nice things about shooting on Lake Powell in the morning is the light and the layers and textures it creates and hides as it climbs in the sky.

This is the time of day that Tawàyama Safaris was named for.

It's only a year old, and is absolutely wonderful. Many displays to captivate the imagination of kids and adults alike.

We headed west on 89 then took the Cottonwood Creek road heading north into the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument.

There are dozens of locations to stop and photograph along this road, but one in particular that stands out. It is unnamed as far as I know, but when you see the goblins and spired pinnacles rising from the red-soiled badlands you know you are there.

This is an area called The Cockscomb because the rocks are tilted and slanted and jut into the sky in a straight line for miles...looking much like a Cockscomb.

I love finding them and photographing them. Betty Risser runs a company called Geo-Situ and she makes replica markers for significant places from all over the world.

She looks forward to recieving e-mails with photographs documenting these markers. Her companie's website is at www.geositu.com.

Lots of walking paths wind through enough goblins and anthromorphic sand-stone formations to satisfy even the most ambitious photographer.

I like the mornings there because it's so peaceful and it's enough of a challenge to get into early in the morning that you're usually the only one there.

I find myself gravitating to these 3 goblins each time I come.

Even with all the recent rain, the streambed was nearly completely dry.

He had been to this spot several times and was waiting for just the right light. This particular arch is called Metate Arch and is only about 6 feet in circumference at it's most narrow point.

He was working for a German photography magazine and knew the area quite well.

He was shooting a Sinar F2 with a 5x7 back on it and a mixture of Rodenstock, Schneider and Nikkor lenses. Shooting Velvia and Provia we talked about the issues traveling abroad with unexposed sheet film and bulky equipment.

A very nice gentelman and he even gave Heather quite a thrill when he offered to show her what it looks like under the dark cloth on the ground-glass.

She was not familiar with view cameras so we talked a lot about optics, the camera, composing upside-down *and* backwards. A brief basic introduction to the view camera. It was an unexpected educational moment for her that made her think in a different way.

It made me very nostalgic to have my 8x10 Deardorff back again. (sniff...)

I'll get that 12x20 ordered soon!

We found a side draw and went up Harris Wash. Found a spot to park that looked interesting. There were a lot of striped sandstone and neat rock formations, so we got out to hike around and see what we could find.

With all the rain in the area I knew it was just a matter of time until we found something neat...just what it was going to be is part of the fun.

Surprizingly even though the surrounding sandstone is devoid of life, there is an astounding amount of life in the potholes. This particular one had a tiny frog in it about an inch long along with water skeeters and several other swimming insects.

During the summer the frogs bury themselves in the sand going into a kind of hibernation waiting for the next rains to come through.

Embedded in the rocks are all kinds of interesting things, one of the most intriguing are little round stones called 'Moqui Marbles'.

They are either volcanic or meteoric in nature, and a third theory says that they were formed by extreme pressure and releasing gas. A Google search got me some interesting theories but nothing definitive.

I won't be seeing much of this in Vegas this fall, so it was a real treat.

I don't offer tours there, but the timing was right, the light was doing it's 'thing', and we were in the mood for one more beautiful vista.

We were glad we stopped.

Many thanks to Sandi and Heather for a great trip!