This afternoon, while looking through some photos to send to an editor, I stumbled upon one I’d forgotten all about. This isn’t a great photo, but it’s a cool photo. The kind of photo I want to share with others. It doesn’t show off my photography skills, but it tells a story all by itself.

I realized that I had a lot of photos like this. Photos that weren’t good enough to make it into my Photo Gallery but were certainly worth sharing. So I figured I’d create a new meme for them in my blog: Found Photos. I’m hoping to fill it with the kind of fun photos we all have but hesitate to share because they’re not quite “perfect.”

The first photo in the series, Wheat Harvest, is a good example:

I must have geotagged the photos I shot that day; iPhoto provided this location information.

I shot this image through the plexiglas window on my friend Jim’s helicopter. We were flying from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to Chelan, Washington. It was late afternoon. Jim was at the controls and I was shooting photos. When we came upon these combines, our flight turned into an impromptu photo shoot, with Jim swooping around to put my into position to get the shots. One of the shots, “Combine in Action,” ended up in my Photo Gallery. But this one seemed too goofy to include. After all, it includes the helicopter shadow and everyone knows that you don’t want your shadow in your photos.

Or do you? This is kind of fun, isn’t it? Seeing the helicopter’s shadow on the ground with the two combines? All going the same way?

The picture has problems. Focus is off and the horizon, which I probably should have excluded, is not level. I think it also shows the curvature introduced by the camera’s 28mm wide-angle lens. I could have done better if the door was off and I was trying a little harder. But we were just having fun and I think this picture shows that.

I’m back in Washington and so is Jim. Last year, we promised to take turns flying and shooting photos. Before the end of July, I’ll remind him of our promise and get some new photos from the front passenger seat in his helicopter.

The weather pattern here these days has been mostly sunny in the morning with increasing chance of showers in the afternoon. Because I have to fly after it rains (see “The Life of a Cherry Drying Pilot” for details), I need to be near the helicopter when it’s most likely to rain. That means the only time free for running errands and exploring my surroundings is when it’s least likely to rain. Lately, that means in the morning.

So yesterday morning I set out on a trip to the Wild Horse Wind Farm on a series of ridges northeast of Ellensburg. I can see the windmills from my camper down in Quincy and I visited them once before last year. This year, I bought along my Sony HD Handycam video camera and my new Flip Video. I wanted to capture the movement of the windmills, as well as the incredible “wooshing” sound the blades make as they cut through the air.

The Visitor’s Center at the Wild Horse Wind Farm.

I stopped for quite a while at the Visitor Center — mostly because it was cold outside. Wild Horse Ridge is quite a bit higher than it is in Quincy and, as you can imagine, it’s usually windy there. I threw a long-sleeved shirt on over my t-shirt but was still chilled. So I started out in the Visitor’s Center. Last time I’d been there, it had been crowded with kids, so I’d cut my visit short. This time I was able to look at the exhibits and video clips they had playing. One of the video monitors was playing a Nova episode about the Missoula Floods; I added it to my Netflix queue this morning. I especially liked the status monitor display which showed a video screen with a map of all 127 windmills, indication of which ones weren’t operating (two of them), and total power output of the operating generators.

I do recommend stopping at the Visitor’s Center if you ever go up there. There are plenty of easy-to-understand exhibits about the wind farm and energy, including some hands-on exhibits for kids. It’s also a great destination for school groups. The last time I was there, a busload of kids was on hand. They offer free tours of the facility that visit the controls in the base of one of the nearby windmill towers. I took the tour last time, so I skipped it this time.

One of the windmills near the visitor center. This view faces out toward where I’m staying in Quincy.

When I was ready to go out and brave the wind, I took a short walk with my still camera before heading back to the truck for my Handycam and tripod. Even though the camera is tiny, I always put it on a tripod to shoot. I simply can’t hold it still enough to create good video on my own. I walked along various pathways and framed up what I think might be good shots. Then I took a series of 30-second clips, using my body and top shirt to shield the camera’s microphone from the wind. My goal was to capture the sound. I haven’t seen the clips yet, so I don’t know if I succeeded.

Afterwards, I stowed the camera back in the truck and brought out my Flip Video camera to do a few clips for use on my blog. I bought the Flip the other day as a birthday present to myself. I find that if I don’t get a new toy at least once every 6 months, I go nuts. I’ve been fiddling around a lot with video lately. My Sony takes amazing quality shots, but getting it Web-ready is a time-consuming, grueling process. I wanted an easier way to create Web-ready video at a better quality than my Blackberry Storm offers. When I saw the Flip while wandering around a mall the other day, I sprung for it. It certainly can’t be any easier to use. The video quality is so-so, but certainly good enough for the Web.

I shot the following three narrated sequences; I’ll let them speak for themselves. The second one, which shows off a blade on display, can give you an idea of the real size of these things — they’re huge.

Want some information about the Wild Horse Wind Farm? Here are three good links:

• Puget Sound Energy’s Wild Horse WInd and Solar Facility page
• Access Washington Wild Horse Wind and Solar Power Project page
• Horizon Wind Energy Wild Horse Wind Farm page

Or find other links by entering “Wild Horse Wind Facility” or “Wild Horse Wind Farm” in Google.

I’m living in my camper on a golf course south of Quincy, WA. The golf course is in the middle of farmland. In fact, the golf course used to be a farm field. The irrigation circle (or semi-circle) is still used to water the fairways. Because of this, all of the trees in the middle of the course are very short.

It’s a weird setup.

Last year when I was here, I took walks with my camera quite often. (You can find some of my better photos in my Photo Gallery; click here for a slide show of my Washington shots.) I’m trying to get into the habit of doing that again. I walk along the edge of the golf course property. There’s a canal on the south side with rushing water. On the other side of the canal, there was a wheat field.

This year, it’s alfalfa.

I was surprised to see the change. The alfalfa was freshly cut — no more than a day or two ago. They cut in the shape of the irrigation circle (or semi-circle). It was difficult to get a good shot at the curves.

The alfalfa will be left to dry in the field for a week or so. Then they’ll drive through with a baler and gather it up into bales that are dropped on the field. Later, another piece of equipment will come by and gather up the bales. They’ll be transported somewhere and covered with tarps until sold or used.

Last year, I didn’t start walking around the golf course until late June or July. I suspect that they’ll plant wheat in the field when the alfalfa has been taken away. I’m not sure if it’s too late to plant that — other fields already have wheat crops that are quite tall.

But I’ll observe and learn and maybe report back here.

I’m in Quincy, WA, right now, living in my camper while I work four cherry drying contracts. I live in my camper because it’s cheaper than living in a motel. A lot cheaper. And since I can cook my own meals, I save a ton of money over the cost of a motel.

One of my contracts is for an orchard down by the Columbia River. There’s a campground literally across the street from it. The campground is also right on the river. I thought it might be nice to stay there for the duration.

I called. They wanted $42 per night for a hookup that included water and power, but no sewer. They weren’t interested in giving a discount for long-term stays. In fact, they didn’t seem to want long-term guests. I figured it was because they were so busy they didn’t need the business.

I knew I could camp at the Colockum Golf Course (formerly the Quincy Golf Course) for $300/month. The site included electricity, water, and sewer. High-speed, reliable WiFi was also available for an additional $35/month. There’s even a restaurant on the premises.

I couldn’t justify the additional $30+ per night for a campsite with fewer amenities. I parked at Quincy, where I’ll likely spend the next seven weeks.

Yesterday evening, I drove down to the orchard to refresh my memory about the setup. I needed to know where the powerlines were and whether there was a fan in the block. While I was down there, I drove through the $42/night campground.

Every single spot was empty.

So explain this to me: wouldn’t it be more beneficial to get someone in there for $20/night ($600/month) rather than no one in there for $42/night?

A perfect example of how greed can be stupid.

Last week, I flew about 8 hours, visiting several popular tourist destinations along the way: Sedona, Grand Canyon, Page, Monument Valley, and Flagstaff. For each leg of the flight, I had my Spot Messenger running, leaving a breadcrumb trail of my GPS location every 10 minutes. The result could be found on my Spot Public tracking page, http://tinyurl.com/FindMaria. (That page only shows my track points from the past 7 days, so it may be empty or showing something else when you view it.)

Yesterday, I viewed the results and captured them as a screenshot. Here it is. You can click the image to view a larger version that might be easier to read.

I guess I can say that this is the official track of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure.

And no, I’ve done geekier things than this.

I need to take a moment to talk about Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley, since so many of my Twitter friends commented on the photos I tweeted of the view from my room.

Goulding’s was founded by Harry and Leona (”Mike”) Goulding back in the 1920s or 30s. It was a trading post back then, where the Navajo would trade their rugs, blankets, jewelry, and other hand-made items for goods that the Gouldings stocked in their store, such as foodstuffs and items otherwise unavailable on the reservation. The trading post started as a tent and, after a while, moved into a stone building that still stands on the property, housing a museum.

The view from my room at first light. I slept with my curtains open so this is the first thing I saw when I woke up on my most recent trip.

During the depression, many of the Goulding’s suppliers went out of business, making it difficult for them to get goods to trade. Harry Goulding got the idea of going to Hollywood to sell John Ford on the idea of using Monument Valley as a location for his western movies. He went out there with some photos of the place and, after some difficulty, got to show them off. Ford came east with film crews and John Wayne. The rest, as they say, is history. Many movies were filmed in Monument Valley, giving the local economy a real boost.

Goulding’s Lodge is built into the side of a hill overlooking the west side of Monument Valley.

Goulding’s Lodge is a pair of motel-like structures built on a hillside overlooking the western part of Monument Valley. Until recently, it was the only lodging in the valley — the Navajo have since built their own hotel inside the park. Just about every room at the lodge has a view of the valley from a private patio. There are also several houses that belong to the lodge that can accommodate larger parties — when I came to the valley with an Arizona Highways writer and video crew in October, we were lodged in a pair of homes that could have easily slept 10 people.

The old trading post is now a museum.

Harry and Mike are long gone but Goulding’s remains privately owned. It’s staffed almost entirely by local Navajo workers. In addition to the lodge and trading post museum, there’s a newer “trading post” gift shop, a restaurant, and a small movie theater that shows slide shows, videos, and old John Wayne movies nightly. There’s a private landing strip across the street where pilots who stay at the lodge are welcome to land and park. Goulding’s also offers several different ground tours of Monument Valley; the passengers on my six-day Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure take a 3-1/2 hour tour while we’re there.

If you’re interested in staying at Goulding’s Lodge, reserve your room now. I book a year in advance to make sure I can get the rooms I need. I recommend two nights, if you can, so you can get into the park and enjoy both a sunrise and a sunset at your leisure. Although you can take your own vehicle into the park, you can go much deeper into the park if you go with a guide; you can arrange for one at Gouldings or inside the park.

No matter how you get there, I highly recommend a stay. You’ll never forget it.

I slept great at Page. I think it was the combination of a comfortable bed, good climate control (no need to run any heater or air conditioner), and a completely exhausted body.

I walked over to the Safeway supermarket, where there was a Starbucks, to get my morning coffee. It was a great day: clear, calm winds, blue skies, nice temperature. Or maybe it just seemed great because I’d slept so well. There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep to get you off on the right track for the day.

I had a bunch of chores to do before picking up my passengers at 10:45 at their hotel. One of them was a meeting with the Chief Pilot of a Page-based tour operator. I’m doing a custom video for them based on our Lake Powell footage and we needed to iron out details regarding the narration script and footage to be used. I also wanted to preflight the helicopter and remove the tie-downs. And pick up a book about the ill-fated San Juan Marina on Lake Powell. And do some networking around town.

I got all of this done — and more — before picking up my passengers and while they were out on their tour of Antelope Canyon. I also checked them out of their hotel, checked myself out of mine, and stowed all of our luggage in the helicopter.

This is actually Lower Antelope Canyon. I made this photo on another trip. My passengers went to Upper Antelope Canyon, which is more accessible and looks a lot like this shot.

One of my passengers had eaten something the day before that didn’t agree with her and was feeling a bit under the weather when I picked them up. Fortunately, the symptoms had subsided by the time they went on their Antelope Canyon tour. When they returned, they were in high spirits and she was hungry for lunch. Since there was no rush getting to our next destination, I recommended a restaurant near the tour operator office and they went in for a meal. I spent the next hour doing some last-minute networking with a Hummer tour operator nearby.

By the time we got to Page Airport, it was well after 2 PM. Although winds had been forecasted out of the southwest at 20 mph, there was barely a breeze out on the ramp. We loaded up and took off uplake. We were the only aircraft out there — the radio was dead quiet.

Padre Butte, in Padre Bay. My husband took this photo on a flight in January 2009.

The lake water was a mixture of glassy smooth areas punctuated with ripples caused by surface winds. Our ride, 500 to 1000 feet above the lake’s surface, was remarkably smooth. I pointed out all the buttes and bays and canyons I knew by name, then swung us past Rainbow Bridge for just about the best view you can get from the air.

From there, it was on to the Confluence of the San Juan River. We followed that arm of the lake up a bit, then turned toward No Man’s Mesa, crossed it, and descended into the valley west of Monument Valley. There are a bunch of dark red sandstone formations out there that few people ever see; an old hogan at the base of one formation provides some scale to its huge size.

The Goulding’s airstrip, photographed from my room at the lodge. Can you see my helicopter parked there?

We approached Monument Valley from the west and made a loop around the famous monuments on that side of the park. Then we went back for landing at Goulding’s airstrip. We spooked a herd of horses as we came in low across the runway. I set us down gently on one of the two helipads.

A van was down from the lodge before I had a chance to call. We were checked into our rooms, overlooking Monument Valley, by 4 PM local time. (The Navajo Reservation is on Daylight Savings Time; we were in Utah at that point.)

I snapped this from the covered overlook in front of the old trading post at Goulding’s.

I took the rest of the afternoon off, shooting a few photos from the lodge property. The drawback of flying into Monument Valley is that once you get there, you’re pretty much stuck. There’s no mass transit, no rental cars, no taxis. The only way off the lodge property is to hitchhike or take a ground tour of Monument Valley Tribal Park. But there are plenty of nice views from Goulding’s Lodge, so it wasn’t difficult to get a few good shots. And everything you need is within walking distance: restaurant, shops, grocery story, gas station, laundry. So it’s not as if staying there is a hardship. It’s not.

Later that evening, I went up to the little theater on the property and saw a short video about the history of the Lodge. The night was dark and the sky was full of stars. As my fellow travelers settled down for the night, a deep silence surrounded me. In the distance, now out of sight, the ancient stone monuments loomed in the darkness.

I slept terribly while at the Grand Canyon. This was due mostly to my room’s climate control — and my inability to set it properly. My room had a baseboard heater that seemed to take forever to warm up the room. I was asleep when it got to the temperature I’d set it to and the room got very dry and stuffy. I woke up and opened the window a crack to get some fresh air in. From that point on, the sound of the wind in the trees kept me from drifting back into a deep sleep.

As I tossed and turned, I was worried about how the forecasted high winds would affect our flight from GCN to PGA.

I finally gave up trying to sleep at about 5:30 AM, which is my normal waking time anyway. Sunrise was only moments away and I was only steps from the rim of the Grand Canyon, but I was too tired to rush out with my camera. Instead, I took my time dressing and getting some of my things together. El Tovar’s dining room opened at 6:30 and I wanted to get one of the first tables. I had plenty of time.

It turned out to be a good thing that I didn’t rush. I would have been disappointed — like that horde of photographers the evening before probably was. There was a huge, thick cloud on the eastern horizon. Sunrise had been a non-event — as it sometimes is at the Canyon — when the world brightened without dramatic colors or shadows. There’s soft light and then there’s really soft light.

Lookout Studio at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, in slightly delayed first sunlight.

When I started my walk to El Tovar, the sun was just peeking out over the top of this cloud. I had my camera with me and shot Lookout Studio and the Canyon beyond with some of that early morning light on it. I imagined — mostly through experience — all those photographers shivering for an hour or more at Mather Point or whatever the designated “best spot” for sunrises was, finally getting a few shots that showed off the canyon’s dawn colors.

I got a table for one at El Tovar where a waiter who is definitely in the wrong line of business “served” me. I won’t go into details, but I will mention that he was rude to me — twice. My mood had been cheerful, despite two consecutive nights of bad sleep, but he managed to bring it down a notch. My breakfast was good, though, and once I got the pity of another server, strong, hot coffee kept coming.

Back outside on the rim just after 7 AM, it was still quite deserted. I had three hours to kill before meeting my passengers. I killed it by checking the weather multiple times.

I use four different methods to check the weather while I’m traveling:

• My new Blackberry Storm has a weather application called WeatherBug. I highly recommend this to anyone with a Blackberry. You set it up with predefined locations or let it get you the weather closest to your current position, using the GPS. The weather info seems to come from the National Weather service and is augmented with icons and other graphic elements that make it easy to read. On my previous phone, a Palm Treo, I used the Web browser to visit the National Weather Service’s mobile Web site where I got the same information with a bit more effort.
• My phone has a directory of the airports I fly into programmed into it. I simply dial the number for the airport’s AWOS/ASOS system and get current conditions read to me. Want to try it? Here’s the number for Grand Canyon’s automated weather observation system (AWOS): 928-638-0672.
• If I have a computer with an Internet connection — which I can usually get via dial-up networking on my smartphone — I can check the DUATS.com Web site. This is a lot of weather information — usually a lot more than I need — but it is an official source of weather for pilots.
• If I’m really concerned about the weather, I can call 800-WX-BRIEF and talk to a briefer. I’ll be the first to admit that I rarely do this. The information available to briefers is the same information that I can get from DUATS. Most of it is of interest to airplane pilots flying at altitudes I’ll never reach, traveling distances farther than I usually travel. But this is another official source of weather. And on one occasion I can remember quite clearly, a briefer helped me find my way over a mountain range that was clouded in.

On Tuesday, I mostly used the first two methods: getting the forecast and hearing the current conditions at GCN and PGA. Although PGA had high winds forecasted for later in the day, the winds remained calm at each call. GCN was another story. Each call brought a report of higher and higher winds. By the time I was ready to meet my passengers, winds were 22 mph gusting to 29. The forecast called for gusts up to 50 later in the day.

We were at the airport and climbing into the helicopter by 10:15 AM. My passengers waited inside while I preflighted. After adding some oil, I climbed on board and started up. I was parked exactly perpendicular to the wind, so my initial pick up into a hover wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked. But when I pointed it into the wind, I had no trouble getting airborne. We turned to the southeast to exit the GCN airspace and begin skirting around the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules area. I had to keep the helicopter’s nose pointed about 15° off our path of flight to keep us in trim.

It was bumpy, but not nearly as bad as I’d expected. We dropped down off one plateau and then another. Soon we were flying over the Little Colorado River Gorge, heading northeast. We passed over a herd of wild horses at 500 feet and I asked my passengers whether they wanted me to circle back to see them better. They said they didn’t so I kept going.

We had a wicked tailwind. At one point, the GPS showed a ground speed of 152 knots. My airspeed never exceeded 110 knots.

At Page, I gave them a quick tour of Horseshoe Bend, the Glen Canyon Dam, and the Wahweap Marina, where my passengers would be staying. We had a bit of trouble landing at the airport because there was a plane in the pattern that kept changing its mind about what runway it would be using and I just couldn’t see it. (I will not approach an airport for landing unless I can see all of the planes in the pattern or there’s a controller to keep us separated from other traffic.) But we were finally on the ground about an hour after we’d left the Grand Canyon.

That same drive would have taken about 3 hours.

I had a lot of running around to do over the next few hours: taking my passengers to the marina for lunch and their boat tour, tying down the helicopter, having lunch, checking my passengers into their room and bringing up their luggage, checking into my motel in town.

I wasn’t staying at the marina. To make a decent amount of money on the excursions, I have to stay in more affordable places. So I stayed at the Page Boy in town. Not sure if I can recommend it. It was recently refurbished, but it still has that 1970s look about it. But it was $60 less per night than the the cheapest room at the marina. That’s $60 in my pocket. And I was too damn tired to enjoy the marina anyway.

Hedgehog Cactus, in bloom.

One thing the Page Boy does have is a small but nicely landscaped desert garden around the pool. And that’s where I saw this hedgehog cactus, with more flowers on it than I thought possible. The flowers were a bright reddish orange and looked as if they were made of wax. I had to shoot a bunch of photos of it. I don’t think I’ll ever see a specimen this nice ever again.

I spent the afternoon trying to nap and not succeeding. I gave up at around 5:30 and went to get an ice cream. Then I went back to my room and watched entirely too much television on Hulu.com.

By 9 PM, I was sound asleep.

I slept pretty crappy last night. My room got cold and I had to get up in the middle of the night to crank up the heat and throw an extra blanket on. I was very glad for the extra blanket. The heat — not so much. It was noisy and part of what kept me up was the sound of it going on and off for the rest of the night.

Okay, so it’s a crappy photo. Sorry. But it shows what I was seeing, so it stays.

I woke before dawn feeling too lazy to walk out to the overlook with my camera. Later, I finally went out and managed to capture a hot air balloon in flight. It would have been a better photo about 15 minutes earlier.

I was in Sedona, of course. On the second day of a Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure.

Once I shook the laziness out, I went over to the lookout and shot some early morning photos of Coffee Pot Rock and the neighboring red rock buttes. I was the only person up there — which really surprised me. The last time I was up there at dawn, there had been a small crowd. But tourists are weird about sunrises and sunsets. They’ll stick to a sunset until the sun slips behind the horizon, often missing out on the colorful light show that often comes afterwards in the clouds. For sunrises, they’ll show up before the light appears and leave just as it’s starting to play on the surroundings. So perhaps I’d missed the crowd. The light was good — although it would have been better a bit earlier.

Coffee Pot Rock and nearby buttes on an early Sedona morning.

N630ML at Sedona Airport.

After grabbing my passenger’s luggage and running them over to the airport restaurant for breakfast, I headed out to the helicopter to load it up and preflight. And take a few photos. Please don’t think I’m consumed with photographing my helicopter. I’m not. But I do need a few new shots of it someplace other than parked out in the desert. And you gotta admit: it is pretty.

By the way, did you know that Sedona is listed as one of the top 10 most difficult airports to land at in the U.S.? I think it was in AOPA Pilot, but I could be wrong.

After some more running around — including finding myself a latte and putting gas in the rental car — my passengers and I took off for the Grand Canyon. I took us northwest past Sycamore Canyon and up to the Colorado Plateau. We flew over my place at Howard Mesa and past the old airport near Red Butte before coming in for landing at Grand Canyon Airport.

There was another R44 on the other transient helipad. The pilot had tied down just one blade. Not very bright unless you want to damage the droop stop. I know this from experience. On an R44, you tie down both blades if you’re serious about protecting them.

I buttoned up the helicopter while my passengers waited on the ramp. It didn’t take long. We were running very early. That meant we spent a lot of time waiting for their helicopter flight over the canyon with Maverick. Afterwards, we took a taxi into the park.

Now normally I’d bring my passengers in to the hotel where they’d pick up the key for their room later on, tell them where to get the key, and let them loose at the canyon. I’d check the luggage and get lunch. Later, I’d check them in and move their luggage to their room. After spending a few hours along the rim, they’d come to the desk, get their key, and go to their room.

Today it didn’t work like that. When I got back from lunch and went to check on the status of the rooms, my passengers were waiting in the lobby. The rooms weren’t ready. My passengers weren’t interested in a stroll along the rim. So they waited.

For about 2-1/2 hours.

I felt terrible about this, but there’s nothing I could do. The rooms are guaranteed for 4 PM check in. Sometimes they’re ready earlier. Sometimes they’re not. Today they weren’t. I never in my wildest dreams expected passengers to prefer sitting in the lobby of the hotel to wait for their room instead of sitting outside on a beautiful day with the Grand Canyon in front of them.

Of course, my room was ready first, but I couldn’t claim it. When theirs was finally ready — at 3:45 PM — I paid a bellman to take them and their luggage to it.

Their room is a canyon view cabin with a fireplace, television, and full bath. Mine is a tiny dorm-like room with a toilet and sink but no shower. It’s cosy, but there’s at least one spider living in it and the light bulb is missing from one of the two bedside lamps.

This photo is not cropped — this squirrel was close.

Anyway, I took a lot of photos of the canyon and the tourists and the squirrels while I was waiting. The squirrels were especially entertaining. They’re not afraid of people at all. They come right up to you, especially if they smell food. I think one of them caught a whiff of the cheese and crackers in my bag. Everyone was taking photos of them, watching their antics. I was very pleased to see that no one fed them.

Bright Angel Trail. There are three hikers in those two circles.

Once we were all settled into our rooms — at least I assume they’re settled into their room — I caught the shuttle out on the West Rim Drive, making a few stops along the way. The light today was a bit softer than I like for a late afternoon at the canyon, but it got better (and worse) as time went on. One of the stops offered an excellent view of Bright Angel trail. This shot isn’t very artistic, but it does document the zig zag nature of the trail. And the two red circles indicate where hikers were coming up. Can’t see them? I’m not surprised; I had to zoom in on the full resolution photo to find them.

How different can these photos be?

There was a group of photographers working their way to Hopi Point, which is apparently “the best” lookout for sunset photos. I got a real kick out of them when I saw them all lined up to take the same photos. If this is what “photowalking” is about, I don’t think it’s for me. Most of these folks had attitude written all over them. They carried backpacks full of lenses and had tripods that could have supported me. And they were hurried along by a guide — or troop leader? — who kept reminding them of the time and how important it was to reach Hopi Point by 6:15 PM.

Personally, I don’t think true art can happen if it’s rushed.

My Grand Canyon sunset shot.

I stuck around at Powell Point and got all of my fading light shots from there. I could see Hopi Point out to the west — it was absolutely mobbed with people. Powell had a steady handful of people that came and went. The light got good about 15 minutes before the sun set and I got this rather nice shot. There are a few others that aren’t bad; I may put them in my Photo Gallery.

I took the shuttle bus back to my room, put on comfy clothes, and started winding down for the day. And I wrote this. Next up: some cheese and crackers and a movie on my laptop.

I’m not sure if I can keep up the pace, but I’ll sure give it a try.

This evening, I went down to Uptown Sedona to check out a few possible hotels for future use. I’m glad I did. The Orchard Inn apparently took over the motel units for Los Abrigados, which I was recommending. This is a good thing. I takes away any uncertainty about room availability. And the hotel is nice, so I’m going to be pushing it to my guests.

Every evening at sunset, a crowd gathers at Airport Mesa’s overlook to watch the sun set.

After a martini at an outdoor bar, I headed back up to Airport Mesa to take some photos. I wanted to stop at the parking area about 1/3 up the mesa, but it was full. So I went up to Sky Ranch, parked by my room, and walked out to the public overlook. The place was crowded. The reason: one of the best sunset views in Sedona:

Not too shabby a view.

I didn’t stay for the whole show. After a while, the light just gets too dim to get any interesting photos. Instead, I dropped off my camera equipment in my room, hopped in the car, and headed back down the mesa for some Chinese food. There’s a restaurant in a shopping center that has Chinese and Japanese food. I was going to get take-out and bring it back to my motel room, but I heard Pink Floyd from the bar and it sucked me right in. The bartender — who looked remarkably like my friend, Rod — had a David Gilmour DVD playing on a big screen. I took a seat right in front of it, ordered a cold sake, and settled down for dinner there.

It was a nice dinner.

I like photographing lights at night. This might not be a good example, but it does give you a taste of what I’m after.

Afterward, I came back up to Airport Mesa and fooled around with some night photography. There was a nice crescent moon, but without a cable release, I was having a heck of a time getting a good shot of it. So I settled for some lights at night photos, like the one shown here of the Sky Ranch sign.

Then I headed back into my room for a phone call home and a quick blog entry to bring my day up to date.

Tomorrow is the Grand Canyon. I hope I can find a different spot for shooting some photos.

I’m in Sedona, relaxing in my room at Sedona Sky Ranch. It’s the first day of my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I left Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ (near Phoenix) at 10 AM with two passengers, their luggage, and my luggage. We had a great scenic flight through downtown Phoenix, up past Lake Pleasant and the Indian ruins atop Indian Mesa, over Black Canyon City and Arcosante near Cordes Junction, past the cliffside town of Jerome, and along the red rock cliffs to Sedona. Our total flight time was around 70 minutes.

Once in Sedona, I got our rental car and took my passengers down to Uptown Sedona for the day. It was around noon and they had a Jeep tour scheduled for 3 PM. That gave them plenty of time for lunch and shopping in town. After dropping them off, I took care of some business at the Jeep tour company, grabbed a salad to go at Wildflower Bakery, and headed back to the airport to button up the helicopter for the night.

Zero Mike Lima parked at Sedona. The white stuff in the sky is mostly smoke from a burn up on the Mogollon Rim.

“Buttoning up” the helicopter consists of tying down the blades in case it gets windy — don’t want the blades flopping around — doing a post-flight check, adding some oil, cleaning the windows, and locking up. I hitched a ride out to the helicopter with the fuel guy so I wouldn’t have to walk or bother someone to open the gate. I like the fuel folks here. They’re friendly and they give me a little discount. I topped off both tanks. I like to say that the only time you can have too much fuel is if you’ve got fatties on board (which I don’t) or you’re on fire.

I ate lunch out in front of the airport terminal on a bench, sheltered from much of the wind. Then I fetched my camera and spent some time taking photos like the one above. Afterwards, I checked in to the hotel. We’re staying at Sedona Sky Ranch, which is on Airport Mesa. I managed to get an upgrade for my passenger’s room so they’d have a full view. My room is one of the garden rooms.

This is the view from the lookout point adjacent to Sky Ranch Lodge’s Red Rock View rooms.

Sky Ranch Lodge, which I wrote about in detail here, is a weird little place. It’s at the edge of the mesa and the rooms looking out to the north have amazing views from their semi private patios. The only reason I’m not recommending it so strongly to my passengers is the simple fact that the rooms could use some “freshening.” (This is a word a friend used when I brought her here.) It’s not that they’re dirty or unpleasant in that respect — it’s just that they could really benefit from some new mattresses and linens. Some of the rooms have a downright 70s motel look about them. An investment of about $500 per room would make all the difference in the world.

But you really can’t beat the view. And it’s so much nicer and quieter up here.

Part of the garden area at Sky Ranch Lodge.

My room is one of the garden rooms. The grounds here are beautiful and immaculately kept, with little streams and goldfish ponds under shady trees, surrounded by flowering bushes. Very pleasant. I’m thinking of grabbing my book later on and relaxing by some of that running water. Or maybe trying out the hot tub, which isn’t far from my room.

After dropping off my passengers in town, I had the rest of the afternoon to myself. Although there was a slight chance my passengers could call for a lift back up to Airport Mesa, I have a feeling they’ll just ask the Jeep tour people to bring them up. They’re on their own until tomorrow morning. We need to be back at the helicopter by 9 AM to arrive at Grand Canyon Airport by 10:30. They have a helicopter tour with Maverick before we head into the park for our next overnight stay.

As for me, I’ll probably head back down the mesa for dinner. I want to check out some of the hotels down there. I’m looking for another affordable but well-kept lodge in town to offer my Southwest Circle guests.

I’ll also likely enjoy the sunset from either the trail northeast of Airport Mesa or the lookout area on the mesa. We’ll see. I have more than 2 hours to plan that out.

And maybe I’ll get ambitious and upload some more photos.

Those of you who have been following my blog might remember that Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure was featured in Arizona Highways, one of the best magazines about Arizona. Arizona Highways shares well-researched information and incredible photographs about the state, offering residents and regular visitors a guide to little-known places while enticing other folks to come for a visit or a more substantial vacation.

The magazine is well-known in Arizona but less known outside the state — except by photographers. Its photos form a sort of “gold standard” for southwest landscape photography. It also has a huge readership in Europe. Europeans — notably Germans and the French — love the U.S. Southwest, probably because it’s so different from anything out there.

Anyway, the magazine coverage got my phone ringing more than usual with people who were serious about flying with me. I sold several excursion packages, including one that begins today.

So starting in a few hours, I’ll be taking two folks from the high country on the east side of Arizona on a six-day, five-night helicopter excursion all over northern Arizona.

If you’re interested in such things, you can track our progress two ways:

• Spot Messenger will be enabled during all flight segments. Visit http://tinyurl.com/FindMaria to see where we’re flying.
• GPS Tracker, in my new Blackberry Storm, will be sending out signals of where I am every five minutes (while it is within cell phone coverage areas). Visit http://tinyurl.com/FindMaria2 to see where I am.

When he heard about these excursions, a fellow helicopter pilot commented to me that I’d really have to like the people I was flying around to spend six days with them. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I only spend about 1-2 hours a day with them. The rest of the time, they’re on tours (without me) and on their own. But, in general, the folks who do this excursion are very likable. After all, they like helicopters and they like touring Arizona. We’ve already got that in common, so we’re good to go.

I brought my still and video cameras with me on this trip and hope to share some images in daily blog posts. While my passengers are doing their thing, I’m doing mine. I have chores — tying down the helicopter’s blades, seeing to fuel, hauling luggage, checking in/out of hotels — but I have just as much free time at the destinations as my passengers do. I intend to make the most of it.

And get a little R&R when I’m done.

Just because I’m on someone else’s vacation doesn’t mean it can’t be my vacation, too.

You may have noticed that my blogging activity has dropped off again. There are two reasons for this:

• I’ve tried three times to write a blog entry and all three times the text is moving off on a tangent that leads to a dead end. I’m blocked.
• I’m working against three deadlines, only one of which is self-imposed, to get a bunch of stuff done. I can’t seem to work as quickly as I used to.

Whatever the reason, I’m blogging less and feeling more stressed. Some people might argue that those two things are not related, but I think they are, at least in part.

When I start my day with a blog post, as I did each day last week, I feel good about myself and ready to start the day. Maybe it’s because I’ve managed to produce something at the very start of my day, before most folks are even awake. Maybe it’s because it sets the pace of my day to get more done. Maybe it’s because writing in my blog often helps get things off my chest or out of my head, stored in a safe place so I can clear them from my mind. In any case, blogging helps me to think and to work better.

What’s on My Mind

This week I’ve got a ton on my mind.

My company was mentioned in Arizona Highways magazine and that has led to a dramatic increase in calls for my flying services. In the past two weeks, I’ve sold three 6-day excursions and have at least two other people seriously considering it. If this pace keeps up, I’ll be flying two to three excursions a month during the spring and autumn months. While this is a great thing, it also brings on a lot of stress — making reservations, worrying about customer satisfaction, thinking about weather and helicopter maintenance issues — the list goes on and on.

This stress is only complicated by the fact that I’m working on a book revision that I need to have done by mid-May. While the software I’m writing about isn’t technically even in beta yet, it’s pretty stable. But there are a few features that simply don’t work. I don’t have access to the bug reporter, where I normally contribute to the company’s efforts to identify and squash bugs, so I don’t know if they are aware of the little problems I’m seeing. And, in the back of my mind, is the possibility that the software’s interface might change. I’m 5 chapters into a 24 chapter book right now — a book rich with thousands of screen shots — and if there’s a major interface change tomorrow or next week or as I’m wrapping up, I’ll have to do the whole revision all over again. How’s that for a stressful thought?

And why do I need the book done by mid-May? That’s another stressful situation. I’ve been contracted for cherry drying in Washington State this summer. Unfortunately, I haven’t been given a start date yet. It’ll take me a week to get the helicopter up to Seattle for its annual inspection, come home to get my truck and trailer, and drive back up there to my contract starting point. But I don’t have any details about where or when I’ll begin work. I could theoretically get a call next week — while I’m on one of my excursions — telling me to report in on May 5. I’d have to scramble hard to make that happen.

Related to this is my need to fill at least one seat on the flight from the Phoenix area to the Seattle area. It’s about a 10 hour flight and the cost of such a flight is enormous. I need a couple of passengers or a helicopter pilot interested in building time to bring in some revenue for the flight. Trouble is, it’s hard to get the word out, few people who hear about it understand what an incredible opportunity the flight is, and those people who do want to go simply don’t have that kind of money. My summer profitability depends, in part, on covering my costs for the ferry flight with revenue.

And on top of all this is the video project from hell, which I prefer not to discuss here until it has been resolved.

So you can see why my mind might not be tuned in properly for blogging.

Taking it One Day at a Time

I know that the best way to work through this stressful time is to take one day at a time and get as much done as possible. My main motivation is peace of mind. The more things I complete, the fewer things I’ll have on my mind to stress me out. While some thing are out of my control — will they change the user interface of the software? will I be called to Washington before mid May? — others aren’t. I just need to plug away at them until I get them taken care of.

And I need to blog every morning. It sure does feel better when I do.

Arizona Highways has long been one of my favorite magazines. There’s no other magazine that consistently shows off the beauty of our state with high quality photographs and articles that paint pictures with words. I’m sure that more than a few people have been lured to Arizona by something they saw in the pages of Arizona Highways. And I’m sure plenty of us have remained to make Arizona our home.

Last fall, I had to follow the route of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I’d hired a video production company to make a promotional video about my company and wanted footage from every location we visited, from Phoenix to Monument Valley. There would be a videographer on board for the entire six-day trip and another following in a truck with equipment they expected to need at each location. Since I had a spare seat on the helicopter, I decided to offer it to two different high quality travel publications. The idea was to put a photographer or writer on board and maybe build a relationship with that publication to trade flight time with advertising.

At least that was the idea.

The Arizona Highways editor responded quickly. He assigned one of the magazine’s writers, Keridwen Cornelius, to accompany us and write up a story about the excursion. If everything worked out well and they could use what she wrote, they’d send a photographer out to get pictures later.

I was thrilled, but didn’t really expect much. I certainly didn’t expect the 10 pages about my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure that appeared in the May 2009 issue.

I got my advance copies about two weeks ago. I ate up Keridwen’s words and aerial photographer Adriel Heisey’s photographs. The article is amazing. Keridwen gave readers a look into her mind as she experienced each part of the excursion, from our departure from the Terminal 3 Helipad at Sky Harbor Airport to our winding canyon flight down the Verde River — and everything in between. For the first time ever, I’m able to understand how people who don’t usually fly around Arizona in helicopters see and feel about the magnificent terrain.

(By the way, this is one of the reasons I like to fly people who don’t usually fly. I get to experience a bit of the wonder of it all through their eyes.)

The magazine reached subscribers on Friday, April 10. That’s when my phone started ringing. I’ve been answering questions and sending out printed literature ever since. The Flying M Air Web site has also been busy, with about four times the hits it usually gets. The magazine just hit the newsstands and the Arizona Highways Web site. I formally announced it on Flying M Air’s Web site and began offering a 10% discount for all excursions booked before June 30.

And yesterday I booked an excursion for a couple from Pine, AZ for the last week in this month.

To say that this is a breakthrough for me is an understatement. One of the toughest things about building a small business is getting the word out about your services — especially when your services have a limited market and are relatively costly. My company is the only one in the country offering multi-day excursions by helicopter. But I can spend thousands of dollars on advertising and not be able to reach the right people. After all, ads are ads — we see so many ads, we know how to filter them out. But editorial content is different. And there’s nothing better than seeing a positive report about a product or service written by an objective third party.

I feel extremely fortunate to have my business covered in such a way.

I hope everyone reading this goes out and tracks down a copy of the May 2009 Arizona Highways. I really think you’ll enjoy every single page.

Hoodoos — in case you’re not familiar with the term — are pillars of stone shaped by wind and rain over long periods of time. The most famous hoodoos in the U.S. are the ones at Bryce Canyon. They’re red rock columns on the edge of a crescent-shaped cliff. (Bryce Canyon isn’t technically a canyon at all.)

But there are other hoodoos in other places out west — including up the Wahweap Creek near Lake Powell.

While doing this weekend’s video work, we paid the Wahweap Hoodoos a visit. They were a lot lower and closer to the ground than I thought and will probably not make it into our final video production. The rocks in this video are just a few hoodoo-like structures in the area. I flew past them with my POV.1 camera fastened to the helicopter’s nose. Although the footage appears to be in slow motion, it’s not. I was moving at roughly 90 knots for most of the run.

Enjoy.