Boo!

Jerry and I got to carve pumpkins today. Jerry's mother's neighbor had a little get-together for lunch and pumpkin carving. I can't remember the last time I carved a jack-o-lantern. We don't get trick-or-treaters so we don't decorate for the holiday.

Mr Bears and Chuckbert's pumpkins

Now we have something to add to the compost bin.

Oh, What a Beautiful Gray Morning!

I set up an alarm on my iPod to wake me up at 6:00 Saturday morning with the hopes that the clouds might disappear overnight. I wanted to have a glorious sunrise to record.

I didn't get the greatest quality sleep that night because there was rain that beat on the tent and the pad wasn't fully inflated. But I was sound asleep when a very loud phone rang. It was the iPod doing what I had asked. It must have roused everyone in the campground who weren't already awake. I turned off the alarm and lay there for a while. The iPod rang again. I guess I just hit the snooze button.

I dragged myself out of the sleeping bag into the cold, damp world. The clouds were still there, thicker than before. A beautiful sunrise was not to be seen.

I took a little Sterno-burning "stove" to heat water for portable Starbucks coffee. But this first morning I didn't have time to heat water. Even though there were thick clouds I wanted to get to the rim and be set up for the time the sun was rising. So I just poured a packet of the coffee into cold water and drank it.

That's not the best way to prepare Starbucks Via. It didn't dissolve. But I figured that the clumps of coffee powder would digest and I'd get my caffeine dose. I ate my bagel with Jif peanut butter (if you can call it that).

How can a product that has more than just fresh peanuts taste "more like fresh peanuts" than peanut butter that's just peanuts and salt? Anyway, it doesn't need refrigeration. I suppose I could have taken a natural product and just stirred it well but it would have been a bit messier than Jif.

I went back to Yavapai Point where I had filmed the rain moving through the canyon the evening before.

There were a lot of low clouds. There was no sunrise to be seen that morning. But clouds breaking up and the sun coming out is a good subject for a time-lapse movie. And there's the Grand Canyon behind all those clouds!

So I set up the camera right at the edge of the canyon. There was a 300-foot drop just a couple of feet beyond the camera. The camera was pointed over the edge so I thought that there was going to be no chance that anyone would get between the camera and the canyon. But I was wrong. There are two frames with a Japanese tourist getting a picture of the canyon from the very edge of the canyon. If you blink, you'll miss her.

While I was standing there (I couldn't just wander around and leave the camera unattended), someone asked about what I was doing. We discussed our photography hobbies. He had just started taking landscape pictures. He has a very sturdy looking tripod. I need to get one myself. We introduced ourselves. John is from Encinitas. (Hey, the REI where I got the camping gear is in Encinitas...what a small world.)

I stood there from 7:00 to 10:00. The sun made only a few, very brief, appearances.

Here is what clouds moving through the Grand Canyon the morning of October 23, 2010, looked like. The three hours are reduced to a minute and 11 seconds. It starts out slow with just clouds visible. But the canyon eventually makes an appearance. Give it time to develop.

It was a Grand time

Jerry and a friend of his made their annual trip to Phoenix last weekend. I thought that since I was going to be alone for four days that I might as well get out of town myself. Ever since I got my time-lapse movie gadget, I had been thinking that clouds and shadows in the Grand Canyon might be interesting subjects for time-lapse movies.

I checked the lodges in the Grand Canyon Village but they were all completely booked for that weekend.

Then I checked the hotels in Tusayan, the smallest incorporated town in Arizona, that is just to the south of the park. There were some rooms available but I didn't really want have to travel all that distance every day.

I looked into other alternatives.

Home away from home

I thought that camping might be the way to go. I figured that I might be able to spend what I'd have had to spend for a hotel room on camping gear and end up with accommodations for future outings. Jerry and I headed over to REI to see what this gear would cost.

It turns out that they rent gear. What a deal, for less than what it costs to spend a night in a hotel room 20 miles from the canyon I could rent a tent, a sleeping bag and a pad for three nights! I could see if I enjoy camping before making the full investment. I reserved the gear and a campsite.

I went camping for the first time since the road trip from hell. (Actually, I think I never spent a night in the tent on that trip. I think I always slept on the coffin at the back of the Carryall.)

We went over to REI Thursday evening to pick up the equipment.

The week before my trip the weather here at home turned wintry. Lots of rain and gloominess. That weather headed to northern Arizona.  I drove up to the Grand Canyon on Friday and for much of the drive there was rain but it quit when I left I-40 at Williams. There was hope that the weekend would be dry!

I got to the campground at around 4:00pm. I pitched the tent between the channel that drains the campground and a shallower channel that looked like rain had recently run through. I then drove to Yavapai Point with my camera.

I got my camera and intervalometer set up around 5:20. Sunset was around 5:40 but there was no sun shining. The thick clouds hid it and were dropping rain in the canyon. But there was enough light for the camera. I had it take pictures of the canyon and the rain for a half hour.

Over the weekend I made several time-lapse movies. Mostly of the heavy cloud cover. There wasn't a lot of sunshine.

Here is the movie I shot that first evening. It shows a rain shower moving through the canyon.

I didn't have the best night's sleep the first night at the campground. I think that I didn't give the self-inflating pad enough time to puff up so it wasn't the softest possible bed. And it rained. The tent kept the water out but the rain beating on the tent was a noise I wasn't used to so it kept me awake much of the time. The sleeping bag kept me warm.

Camping might be a fun way to experience nature. At least in warmer and drier weather.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A Randy Chitto storyteller.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Plastic turtle stuck on a rod in a pot of mother-in-law's tongues.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Photo of Hawaiian Green Turtles. Izzy gave this to us.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Print of a Hawksbill Turtle by M. Mello. We got this at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

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Update (thanks to MrBears's comment!): This is an etching by Marsha Mello.

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