Africa in America

Experienced part of Africa' Safari and Serengeti...atleast a percent of it...here in the backwoods of Arizona...at Camp Verde. Out of Africa Park. The Serengeti simulation is nice...I wonder if the fencing could be more discreet, but thats nitpicking, especially when an actual trip to Tanzania/Kenya is not on the anvil... Still can't forget the Ostrich picking on my camera and the Giraffe slobbering all over my hand and face! Or better yet..getting charged by a white tiger...albeit from behind a fence.

The Grand Canyon.....enough said

Even the limited zoom capabilities of Kodak's C60 Advantix does not do injustice to capturing the breadth and depth of the beauty of THE CANYON...
hopefully one day I fulfill my dream of hiking down the Canyon and pitching camp overnight, 1 mile deep into the bowels of the earth....






Peace and tranquility...and oh yes, it does not hurt to be single-mindedly devoted to the task at hand for well over a million years...in this case the R. Colorado...at it...carving out the gorgeously colored rock strata that forms the Grand Canyon...

As different as night and day..the Canon way..

High res High aperture long exposure photograph, stabilized by placing on a pedestrian walk-way light..the view is of Jefferson Street looking east, in downtown Phoenix..



Canon PowerShot showing off its capabilities in daylight..well yeah...it was wet and cloudy..nonetheless..

It rains in the desert too....sometimes...

The rain gods have been a little kind to the desert south west recently. We've been getting sprinkles of rain every so often. And they have provided for some interesting scenery locally - what with excellent visuals of lightning strikes on the surrounding mountains, the flashes of driving rain against the backdrop of a gray sky, winds howling through trees making them look like they were stooping with age...

Other than helping the ground water level replenish by just a tad over an inch, what this rain has done has been amazing for the weather. Its freezing..thats what is amazing.
Its early December, which usually means mild to chilly weather in this part of the country. Instead, what we've had is freezing weather that began in the last days of November.

Without much more ado though, here are some views of Tempe under gray skies.


The clouds descended on Tempe this past weekend..they stooped so low, the 300 ft "A" Mountain top disappeared. It was cold and freezing with a driving rain. The lights of Sun Devil Stadium seemed to just show up the moisture hanging in the thick air...



Finally the rain let up. But the clouds were still lying low. A tad better than the previous pic...


View looking east along the "University Drive"..usually the Superstition Mountains are visible in the backdrop...but the visibility in this is hardly over a few hundred yards.....