Lows hit a new height

I've been off work this week for my birthday present to myself, with the intent that I'd take some great pictures with my new, great camera! I've been planning this time off for months and after getting the Nikon D610 a few weeks ago I was really looking forward to all of the great pictures I'd take while travelling around Arizona.

One picture I was determined to get was Horseshoe Bend near Page, AZ. You should look at this link, or do your own Google search, to see pictures of this place. It's really something, it's right here in Arizona (about a 5 hour drive from Phoenix), and it's free! The Grand Canyon will cost you a little bit to shoot, but not Horseshoe Bend!

For some reason this place has become pretty popular to photograph. It is a cool shot, and it's relatively easy to get to, but I'd only heard of it recently. Now it seems it's a destination for photogs from around the world.

Well, I went there. If you read descriptions of the place which I'm sure are more eloquent than I could provide, you find that the parking lot is about 5 miles west of Page, AZ. I'd heard horror stories of cars being ransacked while you were there but when I visited there was a park ranger there with visibility over the entire parking lot. That was one of the good things about the place.

A view of Horseshoe Bend from the covered seating area

It's about a 3/4 mile hike to the rim from the parking lot, over loose sand and uneven rocks. First you climb up a hill that is loose sand. That wasn't exactly trivial for me being in the shape I'm in, but it was do-able. My dog Elmer and I made it. Walk across the flat top to where the descent starts and you see you've got a bit farther to walk.

You can make out the trail of people along the trail and where they were congregating at the edge. I will admit, there were a lot of people and a lot of them were passing Elmer and I by as we made our way both to the edge and later, on our way back, and very few spoke English as they went past us.

The rest of the walk to the cliff wasn't exactly easy for me either. It wipes in my face my lack of physical capabilities and how beneficial a life of sitting at a desk can be.

When you finally get to the destination, it's a cliff with a sheer drop of 1,000 feet plus or minus a few. You get to the edge of the rock and there's nothing but the drop off. No hand rails, no warning sign, no life guard. I got up to maybe 5 feet of the drop off and my vertigo and fear of heights dropped in. I got (very) briefly dizzy with a quick glimpse down to the river, stopped, turned around, and got about 15 feet back from the edge.



Visitors enjoying Horseshoe Bend

I sat there for probably 1/2 of an hour hoping my man parts would show up (maybe they'd just been slow to arrive). But, no luck. I watched lots of people climb all over the various rocks, walk up to the edge, take the pictures I wanted to take, laugh, admire, and basically enjoy themselves.

I even toyed with the idea of having someone take a few pics for me. There were a LOT of DSLR cameras there. (I noted with some amount of pleasure that the majority of them were Nikons, identified by the Nikon neck straps). 

In the end, I was able to only snap a few chicken pictures well back from the edge. I was also dismayed that I'd forgotten my graduated ND filter which I could have really used while shooting into the sun. But, overall that was a small concern because the pics weren't going to amount to much anyway. If you look at some of the other pics that have been taken there, you'll likely agree my feeble attempt below is not worthy of much. I have aspirations to try again, but for now this was a low point of my photography, arrived at 1,000 feet above the Colorado River at Horseshoe Bend.
 

My best shot of Horseshoe Bend :(