Grand Canyon At Sunrise, by Dillon Glass
A few of the LEAP students started the day off by waking up at 3 a.m. in order to make it to the Grand Canyon’s Moran Point for a spectacular sunrise. While our Professor and Ryan Brim had been to the Grand Canyon several times, neither had been at sunrise, and I have never been to the Canyon at all. So this was a much anticipated event!
We arrived to the Canyon Rim around 4:30, about 30 minutes ahead of the sunrise.
Photographer Mark Burns was also there to work on a Grand Canyon exhibition he has set for next year (his exhibit will be at the Bush Presidential Library, the Pearl Fincher Museum, and Sam Houston State University) and, in addition to capturing the sunrise by camera, we also captured some shots of Mark photographing the canyon landscape.
As I mentioned, I had never seen the Grand Canyon and there could not have been a better first impression than seeing the stars fade and the hue of colors rise with the sun, revealing the vast canyon below.
The sun began to light up the red rock into a remarkable view that no words, photos or videos can do justice. But that didn’t stop us from trying to capture this marvelous natural beauty.
Exploring the Grand Canyon
The highlight of the day was the 25-mile tour of the Canyon Rim. Because of the boys’ early morning, we planned for a late start, giving Ryan and Dillon a chance to catch up on some sleep.
A little after noon, we headed into the Grand Canyon, where Anne and Maggie would see this most famous of landmarks for the first time. We strolled the rim trail around the Visitor Center, capturing images along the way…
We also had lunch at the wonderful El Tovar Lodge…
…which is not only beautiful…
…but also has great food.
One of the more interesting destinations was the historic Kolb Brothers’s studio.
The Kolb Studio is a Museum dedicated to early efforts to photograph the Grand Canyon. Visitors can learn about the Kolb Brothers’ equipment…
…adventures with early public figures (such as Teddy Roosevelt), their daredevil attempts to photograph….
…and even film the Grand Canyon…
This museum is free, very interesting, and is in easy access of lunch and one of the two South Rim trails that allows access to the interior of the Canyon.
We progressed a short way down the Bright Angel trail, far enough to get to the first tunnel….
…before turning around to get to the rest of the Canyon.
The views didn’t stop, and we enjoyed them all, even the ones with far too many people…
…but our favorites were the ones where we had the chance to go off the main trail a bit and explore.
There were a surprising number of such opportunities…
…and we did our best to make the most of them…
…even hamming it up when appropriate…
This is what we do to terrify our parents and SHSU administrators.
The entire rim is 25 miles, with additional miles available by reservations and National Park Service transportation. There are six developed viewpoints, with another five less formal vistas. We visited almost all of them, traveling approximately 23 of Rim’s miles, leaving only the Desert Watchtower for tomorrow.
Our favorite two stops were the Grand Canyon Village (which is where we began, visiting El Tovar and Kolb Brothers Studio) and Moran Point. The latter is named for the painter Thomas Moran, and it is clear why he spent time there painting. The vista was incredible, while also offering some nice trails allowing you to venture a bit below the canyon rim.
Following our long day along the rim, we drove back to the hotel, before heading out for our evening excursion. Along the way, we enjoyed seeing many elk, including a buck of impressive proportions…
It was a satisfying way to end our first (but not last) Grand Canyon tour.
Grand Canyon at Evening, by Ryan Brim
Around 7:15, we left our hotel to drive to the Grandview Point just in time for the sunset. The canyon was filled with the ambient light from the last rays of the sun, which really showed off the true colors of the canyon.
Soon, the light faded as the sun dipped further below the horizon, leaving us to stare wistfully at the still-beautiful canyon bathed in bluish-red light…
…and wishing the sun would set a bit slower…
But we didn’t have long to wait before our next Grand Canyon adventure. Mark Burns, who joined us on this evening tour, told us that the International Space Station would be making an appearance, so we got out our cameras and tried to capture the fast-moving man-made machine before it disappeared behind a line of trees.
The Station’s distance, rapid speed, the dark sky, and our own photographic limitations made it difficult to catch on film, but the photo above indicates the distance across the sky that the Station traveled during a 20 second exposure. It was an unexpected highlight of the trip.
The whole event only lasted about a minute and a half, but the dust in the atmosphere made the ISS look like a red star moving across the darkening sky.
This was a good introduction to night photography at the Grand Canyon, a subject we continued to explore over the next hour. The Grand Canyon isn’t an official Dark Sky Community, but it is dark, and we were able to experiment (mostly unsuccessfully) with photographs of several constellations as well as the Milky Way galaxy. This was the first time for most of the LEAP students to see this massive cluster of stars in the night sky.
After about an hour out shooting the stars, we packed up all our camera gear and headed back to the hotel so that we could rest up before our trip to the North Rim the next morning.
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