Sunday, May 11, 2008

Californian Condors on South Rim

Today we woke up late in the hotel in Flagstaff and figured out that for the first time we're not in a hurry. Our only goal for today is to get to The Caverns Inn near road 18 - the entrance to Havasupai. But before getting there we had enough time to visit classic South Rim Grand Canyon.
Just before leaving the hotel in Flagstaff it turned out that BestBuy is in the close vicinity of our lodge. I wanted to buy one more portable hard disk and look around a bit, so we decided to visit the store. It was bad idea - everything in the store was so cheap that I got out with full basket. Only that wasn't the bad thing - worse was that my suitcase filled earlier and I really didn't have any more space in there!
Finally we headed to Grand Canyon Village for advertised Imax movie. I thought it's a 3D movie, but it wasn't. It's just shown on Imax screen and that's it - nothing special and more than 12 USD for tickets - what a shame! I definitely do not recommend this attraction - it's better to go to the edge and see more by your own eyes. Waste of money. Can't forgive it to them.
After such disappointment we decided to touch the canyon with our own hands one more time and went to Hermit Rest Transfer Point and took the shuttle to Hermits Rest. It was first time I decided not to drive on my own along the South Rim, but just take a shuttle and see some other side of the park. It was to some extent a very good decision, because we saw something completely new for us. Unfortunately we were able to get only to Hopi Point, because of road closure. Next good date for seeing more is probably autumn 2009.
Hopi Point is very interesting, because you can see river from much closer distance than you can do from Desert View. Besides as I noticed all the photographers go there for sunset pictures. I can recommend it, but you've to be in a hurry, because they plan to close the whole road very soon and reopen it in 2009.
One more thing worth mentioning are Californian Condors (Gymnogyps californianus). You can see many of them from Yavapai Point - they are numbered so it's even easier to see which one is which and trace their behavior (if you've enough time of course). It seemed another new thing for me, so I took few pictures. It was before I got my new superlenses: Canon 100-400/4.5-5.6, so I've used 70-200/4L+1.4x for this picture - that's why it's not perfect. Besides this picture was taken handheld.

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