American Festivals Project

If there’s anything we learned from the rodeo, it’s that the cowboy life is hard on the body.   If you want to be in top form for the next weekend, you better find a way to rest and restore those aching muscles.   We figured the AFP better follow the lead of our bronc riding buddies and get in a good soak to work out the knots from those long drives and long days of shooting.  So we finished up our stay with the young and talented Beus Bros. at the Funk Shack (our friends via Couch Surfing) and headed for some desert hot springs on the Colorado river where Arizona meets Nevada and civil engineering meets its toughest challenge.

The Beus Bros. gettin’ their groove on at the Funk Shack.

Ross lights the sky on fire with his sick longboarding skills in front of the Phoenix Mormon temple.

We also couldn’t help stopping along the the way in Sedona, Arizona where it’s purported the male and female energies of the universe converge to create a vortex of healing energy.  To get more clarity on this phenomenon, we sought out the wisdom of a Sedona fixture and modern-day shaman, Kenny the Cowboy.  He shared with us some wild stories, some background on the history of the universe, and let us snap a photo of him with his walking stick.  Kenny suggested we take pyschedelics to fully experience the vortex but we opted to get high instead by climbing to the tallest point we could find.

Some dam tourists.

Kenny the Cowboy.

The AFP hearts cacti.

The secret ladder to the hot springs.

Actually, we had more than hot springs to motivate us towards the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.  The AFP had a special weekend visitor to pick up at the airport in the City of Lost Wages…Andrew’s girlfriend, Jenna.  At first light (in a city that’s bright all night long), the Dodge Lodge set out for the most renown of all American landmarks, the Grand Canyon.  Neither Ross nor Andrew had been and Jenna was only twelve when she last stood at Mather Point outlook.  Before we get any further talking about our incredible journey in the canyon, we should mention that there were NO festivals this past weekend.  We searched and searched and couldn’t dig up anything.  It was actually pretty lucky that we had a free weekend while we were in Arizona because it’s hard to fathom completing a project of this nature without spending the necessary time to photograph one of the world’s most incredible visual gifts.  For photographers it’s near impossible to pass up the chance to shoot in the Grand Canyon, especially when a full moon is nigh!

When we arrived to the Canyon, it was just about sunset and the temperature was cool.  But come morning, the weather had sharply turned.  Waking up early with the hope to photograph the sunrise, we discovered not the open sky of the night before but total white obscurity from thick layers of clouds pumping out snow in all directions.  We waited for the storm to pass but after an hour it was still a blanket of white.

So we headed to the Backcountry Camping office and by some miraculous stroke of luck received the LAST camping permit for the weekend.  And as we left the office and drove to the trailhead that morning, the clouds began to break, the snowfall ceased, and a giant white veil lifted to expose the beautiful face of “Kaibab” (the word for the Canyon used by the native Paiute Indians which translates into “mountain turned upside down”).  It was a stunning sight as a bright blue sky poured in above and the rocks and trees stood dusted in snow.

The rest of the day was spent descending the steep terrain of the South Kaibab trail and shedding layers of clothing as we entered warmer and warmer pockets of air the further down we walked.  It quickly became apparent that there is no truly feasible way to comprehend the size and majesty of the Grand Canyon without walking down into it.  As beautiful as the views are from up top, it takes sore muscles, good old fashioned sweat, some nimble pack-mule avoidance, and an icy dip into the Colorado to feel like you’ve really taken it all in.  With some yoga on the beach and delicious food hot off the camp stove, we prepared our bodies for the hardest part…hiking out.

The most dangerous hike in the Grand Canyon is the one where people try to make it to the river and back in one day.  We weren’t about to do this.  But we did do what is probably the second most dangerous hike…the one that begins at 9pm.   With the moon at 95% full and Jenna with an early flight back East on Monday morning, we mustered the motivation and energy to make our final ascent of 3 miles (and 3,000 ft of altitude) back to the Dodge Lodge.  With exhausted legs, freezing temperatures, low blood-sugar levels, and a steely resolve we avoided hypothermia and overcame physical limits to emerge before midnight with the moon still up and the pavement of the South Rim under our feet.

The Colorado River by moonlight from Plateau Point

From our auspicious beginning to the final moonlit ascent back to civilization, it was an adventure to rival all the rest.  We are so grateful for Jenna’s company, humor, and unassailable grit.  We all learned something new about ourselves in this grandest of American landscapes.  Oh, and the pictures–they turned out pretty well too.