More Grand Canyon Photos
By karstentb on Feb 14, 2008 | In Outdoors, Photos
I get to enjoy the Grand Canyon almost every day! For those of you who aren't so lucky, here are a few photos. I'm sure to post more from time to time. The exact location of the photos is here. The river runs through the main canyon. The side canyon just to the east of the airport is Descent Canyon. The photos were taken just upriver of where Descent Canyon meets the main canyon. If you zoom in, you'll see the boat docks.
The morning sunshine lights up the canyon wall.
A small barrel cactus, smaller than my hand, grows along the rocky slope of the canyon.
Over time, these barrel cactus, common in this part of the canyon, can grow to heights of six feet. This one is about 3.5 feet.
The red spines on these cacti are not something you want to run into. They're painfully prickly even through jeans. Somehow, though, desert bighorn sheep are able to get through the prickle and dine on the soft fleshy insides.
Another small cactus grows in the shadow of a boulder, on the slope of a wash that drains into the river.
I'm out of focus. Apparently coworkers can't figure out the shutter-half-way-down focus-and-recompose feature of auto-focus cameras.
Haven't noticed the drought? Look no further than the Colorado River. Here is the old boat dock, which ten years ago was just feet from the water's edge. The water is now about twenty feet lower, as you can see from the opposite bank.
When the water dropped too low to continue using the old dock, this new one was built. Since it was built, the depth of the water has continued to decrease. Most of the new dock now sits on wet sand, and just last week we added about five feet to the end of the dock. In the summer, I can walk out to the middle of the river in many spots and the water will not cover my head. At it's deepest, it is only 8 feet.
I'm sure the Grand Canyon was quite lovely before humans ever saw it, but these 55-gallon drums of premium gasoline boat fuel certainly add a nice lived-in touch, don't you think?
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