Thursday, October 28, 2010

Day 2 in a Long Weekend

This is what we woke up to. Well kinda. We actually had woken up an hour earlier, but it was grey out, so we skipped sunrise and slept in for another hour. By the time we rolled out of our sleeping bags, the sun was blasting through the clouds.

Day 2's Itinerary:
The Plan:
1) Take pictures of Chaco Canyon all day
2) Try to shoot Star Trails again
3) Camp overnight and capture sunrise

The Reality:
For the most part, we did stick with the plan of shooting all day. That morning, we started at the largest ruin in the area, Pueblo Bonito. Once we had scoured the site inside and out, we continued to the Penasco Blaco hike and scoped out the petroglyphs that were etched hundreeds of years ago, As historic as both were though, I couldn't seem to get in the rhythm of shooting. Reviewing my photos now, they reflect my mood then: bored and uninspired. I couldn't seem to get excited about where we were, or the subjects that were before me. Perhaps it's because I've visted ruins before, all of which seemed more interesting to me than Chaco. Or maybe it was the lighting -- bright and stark, with no sense of softness. Whatever it was though, it came across in my photography. In hindsight, it was a good lesson to take away for myself.






As the day progressed, the sunshine began to dwindle as the afternoon storm clouds began to form again. But after a quick downpour, the sun peeked through enough for Norman and I to take a final hike of the day. This hike started at the bottom of a rock fall, and required us to scramble up over fallen boulders, through a fissure between cliff walls, and finally popping out on top, overlooking the canyon below. The view was grand;  The canyon valley unveiled in its full glory, and bird's eye views of multiple sites.



At this point, the sun was starting to drop and the sky began to fill with color. The wind on the plateau picked up -- probably from the clouds moving in, but those same clouds made for beautiful skyscapes.



By this time, we had already decided to change our plans, and head north toward Mesa Verde that night instead of camping. So as the sun began to dip behind the canyon walls, we made our way back down into the valley and back to the car. Personally, I'm glad that we took that final hike. I left Chaco with a better impression of the place, and a better outlook on the weekend.

It was really too bad that outlook didn't stick around for long.

Although it hadn't rained nearly as much as Thursday, the roads out of Chaco were just as slick as going in... Although we managed to stay out of the ditch this time (and what had been a raging current was nothing more than a quick stream), Chaco still managed to get its last laugh. We had discovered that morning that the car was very shaky. Vibrations were rampant when we crossed the 40 mph threshold. We thought and hoped that it was unbalanced wheels due to the caked mud on the wheels, but feared the worst. Once we drove through 20 miles back to the highway, we stopped to and tried to chisel off what we could with our fingers and sticks, but to no avail. So we drove north to Farmington in pouring rain, the car vibrating like a Sharper Image back massager.

The mud on the tires from the trip in...

There's a town just east of Farmington called Bloomfield. We arrived in Bloomfield around 8:30pm.  The car was still shaking, so Norman had the great idea of finding a car wash to see if we could rinse the mud off. And wouldn't you know it? There was a truck wash with self-serve pressure washing. We were in luck! We pulled in and popped $1.50 in quarters and started going to town on the wheels. Unfortunately, time ran out before we could finish, and with no more quarters, we used my debit card to finish the job. You would not believe how much mud was on that car... Anyway, about $3.50 later, our job was finished. Triumphantly, we cheered our good fortune of a self-service truck wash, and went to the card reader to stop the transaction (it charged by the second). THUMP! (Know what that is? It's the other shoe dropping.) Guess what? The stop button didn't work. Press as we may, with fingers, coins, keys, it was to no avail. The timer and charges kept ticking away. Tick, tick, tick... there's 5 cents... tick, tick, tick, another 10... there was no stopping it. What was a $3.50 transaction grew to $5, $10, $15... And since it was after hours, there was nobody to terminate it. And since I used my local credit union's debit card, it was also after hours, so I couldn't terminate the fee from my side either. Defeated, we realized that there was nothing we could do that night, and headed to our hotel in Farmington. (By the way, the pressure washing did the trick. The SUV was much better after its expensive shower.)

The next morning, Norman and I decided to head back to the truck wash and try to solve the problem with the cashier. I braced myself for battle. I envisioned arguing with some stubborn teenager who wouldn't see that a $350 charge for a SUV was unreasonable. I actually got a little nervous for my debate. But I was ready to kick some butt, and reclaim the money owed to me.

We pulled up to the truck wash and walked into the office. Instead of some punk kid manning the register like I envisioned, we were greeted by a curley, white haired grandma. I was caught off guard, but I gathered my wits, and explained our situation, ready to do battle. But as you would expect a curley, white haired grandma to respond, she sweetly said that the machine automatically cuts off at $25 (we had left after we crossed the $20 mark). $25! That was nothing! So I politely declined,  thanked her, and we left, feeling a bit relieved and a little sheepish (well, me anyway).

Things I learned or were reminded of through this fiasco.
1) If your credit card continues to charge, there's usually a termination amount. Or you can slide your card again to end the transaction.
2) Unless you're crossing a real river, most likely you'll be fine.
3) Go with the flow (no pun intended). After all, you're on vacation.
4) Mud in Chaco Canyon is like concrete when it dries.No wonder the Chacoans used it as mortar.
5) Curley, white haired grandma types are awesome.

So there you have it, the second day of our long weekend.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Day 1 of a Long Weekend

My cousin is a Material Sciences graduate student. Usually, he's hard at work (or research) in one of the basement labs (seriously) at the University of Michigan. But every once in a while, they let him out to go to a conference. It is for this reason that he and I spent four days last week in New Mexico and Colorado.

Norman's five day conference is this week in Santa Fe, NM. Because he's smart, he got the great idea of extending his time in the Southwest a few days, and invited me to come along for a long photography weekend . Since I've had the travel itch for the past few months, I gave him the thumbs up and we quickly planned out our short and busy itinerary. Little did we know what was in store for us.

DAY ONE
The Plan:
1. Fly into Albuquerque (which I still have problems spelling) on Thursday, early afternoon.
2. Drive up to Chaco Canyon, NM in time for the golden hour before the sunset.
3. Camp and try out some night shoot (star trails, light painting, etc).

What actually happened:
Due to a delay in my flight and at the car rental place, plus a quick (and delicious) early dinner at a New Mexican restaurant, we didn't get on the road until 4pm or so. By then the storm clouds has darkened, and the rains came. By the time we turned off the highway onto the 16 miles of unpaved Country Road 7900, it was dark. And muddy. We actually had planned for this, and rented a SUV thinking it would help with the terrain. Yeah, not so much.

After driving 13 miles of our 16 mile road, we came across was the gushing flow of flood water over the road.... Preceding the torrent was not one, but two signs stating "Do Not Cross Road When Any Water Is Present". As you can probably guess, we weren't exactly prepared to ford a river in a rental Chevy. (Get it? Ford, Chevy... Sorry bad joke.) So there we are, stopped in the dark, blocked by a river of flood water. Since both of us are city slickers, we decided to wait for the water to recede a bit (it had stopped raining for some time by then). To pass the time, out came the cameras.

We messed around for a while, most of which was spent experimenting with nightime photography and throwing rocks into the middle of the overflow, trying to guage the water's depth. After multiple bad exposures, a few kerplunks!, and an hour going by, I decided it was time to brave the obstacle since the water looked to have receded quite bit. And what an anti-climatic crossing it was. We drove straight through, with no problems whatsoever.  (Now that I think of it, the SUV was a Chevy Traverse. Fitting.) Although that was the ideal outcome, I've experienced more drama from driving over SR520 in sunshine.

That wasn't it though. The peak of adventure came shortly thereafter. As I mentioned earlier, the road was muddy. Muddy and rutted in many places, and MUD-DEE in others. It is the latter where we began to experience the "SUV slip and slide". At this point, I'm driving about 5 miles an hour, sliding every direction. The car's tires had caked on 3 inches of mud, negating any tread that was on the tire. So here we are, controlled sliding down the road. It was progress though, until the fateful moment when the Chevy's backend slid a bit too close to the ditch... the next thing we knew was the car was resting at a 45 degree angle in the ditch. The right tires in the bottom, the left tires on the trough wall. At this point, I'm thanking God that there's no damage to the car and also wondering why we didn't get the optional insurance at the rental counter in case things got worse.

Since we weren't planning on staying in that position all night,  I decide to try to drive out. No good. Every time the front tires moved up the ditch wall, they'd come sliding back down. The only option that remained for us was to drive down the channel like the Duke boys of Hazzard county and hope we'd be able to get out. (I really wish we had gotten a few pictures of this, but at the time we both were preoccupied.) Finally, after what seemed like a mile, but was probably a couple hundred feet, I was able to gun the car enough to squirt out of the situation.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. As you can tell, nothing really went according to plan that day... we arrived at the campsite too late to capture sunset, which wouldn't have mattered since the storm clouds were out anyway. We weren't able to shoot star trails (once again due to the clouds), and the weather was fickle enough for us to decide to lay down the seats in the SUV, and forgo the tent. All in all, long and exciting first day to our long weekend.