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.

Monument Valley is not the same anymore

Today our goal was to get from Moab to somewhere near Grand Canyon South Rim for a night. So we started very early in the morning, but first visited less known Corona Arch at the end of Potash Road. This is a big arch not covered by Arches NP, because of its location on the other side of road 191. It took us some time to get there from the parking lot and we found quite interesting shortcut that allowed us to avoid ladders. Unfortunately it was a bit more risky, but we got fun. Sun wasn't favorable for us and allowed us to take only few pictures before hiding behind dense clouds. So we were waiting about 30 minutes and decided to go, because time flew very quickly and we were in the hurry.
Almost the whole day we spent in the car, but stopped by for a short visit in Monument Valley. We were lucky. It wasn't a classic sunny day - I saw thunders, clouds and lightnings for the first time in my life in this place. Everything was different and thus much more interesting. We headed to Navajo park and got surprised - Indian stalls being always down the road 42 disappeared! You can't buy jewelery here anymore or we didn't find it. Whats even worse they are building the big hotel with the Monument Valley view just on the edge - it destroys the whole atmosphere that were here before. But what can you do - it's Indian's land and they do what they want.
Because it was really late, we decided to quickly make the classic loop, take some pictures and go farther, look for the lodging. Weather was getting worse, wind was carrying a lot of sand that was everywhere - it especially came to like our gear, so we had a lot of cleaning later that day. We somehow managed to take some good pictures and left the place that isn't the same anymore. I don't like the changes introduced here...
On our way to the hotel we stopped by Indian's restaurant in Tuba City - they had very good ribs. Unfortunately there wasn't any hotel available there, so we went farther to Flagstaff and found Days Inn there. We arrived very late, but they had Internet so spent some much time browsing e-mails and webpages before fell asleep.

Toroweap

It's dawn. We've just clambered out of our tent and came here - to the edge of the Canyon. This place is known as Toroweap and if you want to see a real Grand Canyon you should definitely come here. Currently Toroweap is a part of Grand Canyon National Park, but as opposed to South or North Rim, it's only for privileged people. Why it's like that? Because access to this wonderful area is very difficult. You have to cover about a 56 miles of unpaved road and last 5 miles of very bumpy and rocky road. It's recommended to have a high clearance SUV for this (although I heard of people coming here with classic cars - I don't believe this after seeing the road with my own eyes) and of course spare tire and tire repair kit is a must.
We came here from Fredonia and it took us about 2.5 hours to get to the camping that is very primitive and has only few designated places for cars and tents - it's according to the rule first come, first served, so if you come late, you could have an option to get back to Fredonia or Kanab. We were lucky and found probably the last place to camp. Just after that we've prepared a kind of dinner for both of us and later went to the edge to take some pictures of sunset at Toroweap. What we've seen there was like a dream. Water about 1 km directly below us standing on the edge of fragile rock - very captivating and unusual view! I don't think there's another place like this in the whole Grand Canyon. Actually that's why we spent about 2 hours taking pictures and what's worse we filled almost all of memory cards. Of course another 3 hours of taking pictures we spent in the morning, but dawn light is much more difficult to photograph and I don't count on having even one good shot. But we'll see - there's always hope.
I'd like to mention another interesting story about Toroweap - we've just read that since Toroweap became part of Grand Canyon National Park, 5 people fell down off the rock. It's strange because rocks seem to be quite stable and secure, but who knows?
Now it's time to leave this little paradise and head to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, then prepare for a visit in Zion National Park. See u soon...

Some more details

Today I decided to show you something more. I mean more about our planned trip (less than 40 days left to departure!!!). So here's the map of our planned route. As you can see, after departing Page we'll head to Toroweap - probably the most deserted point in the Grand Canyon Area, but as I heard, still accessible by car. We plan to spend at least one night there sleeping in a tent. Later we have plans for more common places like Zion NP, Bryce NP, Canyonlands NP, Arches NP - but we plan to visit some less known nooks of these famous locations. I can only say, that we also have permits for Subway in Zion NP. It seems to be very interesting place, although requiring some effort to get in.
Later we dream of seeing Monument Valley, Grand Canyon South Rim and famous Havasu Falls. In the last mentioned we have ambitious plans to get to Beaver Falls and also use alternative route to take some pictures of Mooney Falls from the top of upper canyon rim - it's the route that forks near cemetery - only that is mysterious enough to try this less known part of Havasupai reservation.
Hope you enjoy reading my scribbles? If not, then don't worry - as I promised in first blog entry, I'm doing it more for me myself than for others to read. I'm just practicing my english before the trip :) Hasta luego seniores i senioras...