Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

I'm back with another set of photos from the Grand Canyon... thanks for your indulgence! (If you really like to drool over amazing rocks, the first two episodes are Into the Canyon and The Search for Chevaya Falls . The fourth is Back Out of the Canyon .). The attempt to see Chevaya Falls was our third day in the Canyon, and we followed it with a second night at Clear Creek. The fourth day, we moved camp to the Bright Angel Campground, next to Phantom Ranch.  Temperatures were heating up, so I made as early a start as possible, remembering both the 3-400' climb out of Clear Creek canyon and the long, fully exposed traverse back to the North Kaibab. Already up the big climb before first sun. Camp was down in the bottom where the cottonwoods are. Morning light. Collared lizard. Prickly pear in bloom. I was back in sight of the trail bridges by mid-morning. The Kaibab bridge--the Black Bridge--is clearly visible. The Silver Bridge (Bright Angel Trail) is barely discernible if you

Last month when I needed to get out of my house so the realtor could show it, I went a little farther than was required--I went to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with four backpacking buddies. I have lots of nice pictures, so I'm going to do more than one post on it. (That's a lie. I'm doing the first two days because that's all the farther I've gotten in editing the photos.) The route was down the South Kaibab trail, then out to Clear Creek and back to Phantom Ranch before going out via the Bright Angel trail. We did a couple of dayhikes on layover days (being unclear on the meaning of "rest day"). The South Kaibab descends 4740' in about 7 miles to cross the river and land at Phantom Ranch. Weather was more than cool, so we didn't make any extraordinary efforts to get to the TH early, starting down about 8:45. Ready to drop off the edge. The trail descends aggressively through the cliff bands, then traverses through the eroded slopes of less clif

The writer update is pretty short and maybe not so sweet: I'm in the middle of moving from California back home to Washington, and writing... well, it's hard to squeeze it in when you're packing boxes all day and worrying about the effects of the rapid interest-rate hikes on home sales. So I've made only a very little progress on the novel this month, though I did manage to make some good notes and write a few pages. As for the Grand Canyon... I have an awful lot of photos to edit from a 6-day backpack trip to the bottom of the Canyon, so I'm starting with just a few shots from the South Rim, and a few from the trip out to the Canyon. I'll get back to that with more, too--I saw some nice places coming and going. I started the trip with a quick visit to the Bay Area, where I stopped in to see my grandsnake (okay, my son's pet Sinoloan milksnake). I took time for a couple of walks by the ocean, something I've missed while living inland. Then in was on the

Jemima Pett suggested it, and since there are so many more photos in my Grand Canyon rafting album than I was able to share even in 8 posts on the trip, I'm doing one more, just for some of the pretties that didn't make the cut. Of course, I lost track of the days of the week again, so here's my Photo Friday coming on Saturday again. These are just some random photos from the first half of the trip that didn't make it into the main trip reports, with minimal commentary. Approaching Navajo Bridge, Day 1   First morning on the river Looking for whitewater Some kind of wormish fossil The sandstone and limestone portions of the Canyon are full of fossils. It's not just fossils. The Canyon is full of life.  Humans, too, sometimes being strange. The apex of river fashion Creekside boulder reveals the radical variations in water level in the Little Colorado Keep an eye on the sky. Morning haze. Water color The beautiful green or clear water we had all the way isn't nat