Blog

Roy Kerckhoffs' Arizona Road Trip 2018 | Day 1

In early 2018 I went on a road trip in Arizona, driving from the Grand Canyon to Tucson, with stops at Monument Valley, Sedona, and Jerome

The plan for this week was to attend the Fountain Hills art show in the weekend of February 24th and 25th, then drive to the Grand Canyon on Monday and from there in several days drive to Tucson, where I was supposed to take part in the Tucson street fair the next weekend. 

However, I caught the flu a couple of days before Fountain Hills. I felt worse by the day and I just couldn’t stop thinking of having to set up a booth while sick. So I emailed the show organizers and canceled it. Bummer! 

Monday

So after being in bed all weekend, on Monday I thought I could pick up my trip from the Grand Canyon. I still didn’t feel 100% but good enough to go on the road and hopefully all better when I’d arrive in Tucson. I hit the road very early, before sunrise. The Grand Canyon is a long drive from Carlsbad, California: almost 9 hours of driving, not counting rest stops.  

I’ve driven this route before and I remembered it’s not the most exciting drive. So I’ll skip ahead  this part.

I arrived around 2:30pm at my hotel in Grand Canyon Village and checked in. Today, I wanted to take a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon.

Almost exactly 14 years ago, in February 2004, I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time with my dad. We had taken a helicopter ride over the canyon and I had my Nikon film camera with me. Unfortunately, a couple of days before we left, I had messed up my Nikon D100: I was trying to clean the sensor with a compressed air can and the liquid came out… (my fault, did’t keep the can straight). There were drops all over the sensor and I had sent it in to Nikon. So I was taking photos with rolls of Velvia 50 (positive film). 

Later, when I scanned them, it turned out they were not as high-resolution as I’d wished for (wouldn’t have been with the D100 either). Therefore, this felt like another chance for some good aerial Grand Canyon shots with my D800.

I headed over to a nearby helicopter ride company. There was one seat left this day for the next helicopter ride and I paid for it. I get air sick/sea sick/car sick/etc. very easily so I also bought some anti nausea pills at another counter and ate one. Also, I wasn’t quite feeling that great yet, still recovering from the flu. But I had to take those photos! 

The helicopter was able to take a large number of passengers (I believe it was 6 or 7) and now I was worried I’d be sitting in the middle. Fortunately I was in the front right, probably the best seat I could wish for. 

We took off. The pilot said they were only allowed to fly towards the Canyon in certain parts as we were flying over the Kaibab National Forest to the east, where he then would turn left and fly over the Canyon. He said that there were lots of animals living in the forest, including deer and bears.

He took a left and a couple of minutes later we flew over the south edge of the Grand Canyon, such an awesome view!

I started snapping away, horizontal and vertical shots, trying to keep any helicopter parts out of the viewfinder. I had set the ISO to 100 and the aperture to F/11. While shooting I kept an eye on the shutter speed, making sure it wouldn’t drop too low as the flight was quite bumpy.

We flew over the the Colorado river, the Little Colorado River, then turned north.

The pilot said that the North Rim is higher than the South one and that we hadn’t increased altitude yet since we flew over the South Rim. Indeed, the North Rim was still peaking out above us.

We gained altitude and could see the snow-covered forest extending beyond the North Rim.

I still felt fine. From there we flew back: the whole flight had lasted about an hour. And the best thing: I didn’t have to throw up! I checked my camera: I had taken 263 photos. Still enough room left on my card to go to drive up to the South Rim and walk around a bit. 

I took some more shots from the South Rim, down into the Canyon and also with snow in the foreground.

The sun was getting lower and it was getting very cold now, below freezing.

I headed back to the hotel where I grabbed a dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and headed to bed. The plan was to get up early the next morning, drive to the Desert View Watchtower and from there perhaps to Monument Valley? I’d make that decision the next day as I had to figure out if it would all fit time-wise.

This time lapse shows when I hand colored one of my Grand Canyon shots with Marshall Photo Oils on inkjet paper:

Continue to read about day 2.