Dreams, Moments, Travels
From Zion, it’s a short drive to Bryce Canyon National Park.
We are on our way to a particular hike further into the park.
From Sunset Point, we went out for a short hike on the Navajo Loop Trail through Wall Street.
The 1.4-mile easy trail takes you to the canyon floor and connects to several other trails, including the Under-the-Rim trail that stretches nearly 23 miles through the park.
Like a dog hanging out the window.
Spent the night in Page up next to Lake Powell, making visiting Antelope Slot Canyon as easy as pie.
The Slot Canyon is not an easy place to take photographs. While the eye easily adapts to the available light and the swirls in the sandstone take on the most sensuous of curves and colors, our little Sony Mavica struggles to capture enough light and detail.
I don’t think I’ve shared this before, but Caroline and I first met Robert in the summer of 1995, just a few months after we moved from Frankfurt, Germany, to Arizona. At the time, we were the owner/operators of the Congo Internet Cafe in Scottsdale. Robert came in to check out the place, and we struck up a conversation that has lasted for four years now. The guy has a great sense of curiosity and art appreciation that resonates with us.
Seeing we are in the area and don’t have a hard schedule to conform to, we took the opportunity to visit Glen Canyon Dam and went on a guided tour to see how the place operates.
There’s something intimidating about being at the foot of the dam and seeing so much water leaking out of the rock down here. While the dam itself hasn’t sprung a leak, there are a ton of places in the sandstone in front of the dam where water is escaping. Being a layperson and not an engineer, I can only marvel in disbelief that the pressure of the Colorado River dammed up behind this giant concrete wall hasn’t made those leaks pop a cork and start a cascade of events that would catastrophically drain Lake Powell to our left.
Stop to take a photo as a reminder that this old movie set might be interesting to visit one day.
The aliens have arrived in Zion National Park here in southern Utah. We are on the lookout for cows to abduct for BBQ experiments or for others who are on the same quest.
I married an especially beautiful and smart woman who makes me smile almost every time I see this face, even in photographs.
It’s Friday afternoon when we get underway for a quick getaway up north into southern Utah. Robert Bell is accompanying us, so this is an Alienzoo crew kind of thing. You might guess from the trees in the background that we’ve already left Phoenix; we are, in fact, already in Flagstaff.
On rare occasions, this little camera gets some rather good results, but only on occasion.
We had to stop at Sunset Crater National Monument and then here at Wupatki National Monument because they are both beautiful places that should always be stopped at in case we see something we’ve never seen before.
We called this home for a while. We were living in McDowell Mountain Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona.
This was our view looking northeast.
While we were here at Siggraph for two days, apparently, I didn’t shoot anything yesterday. Siggraph is a computer graphics trade show that is most appealing to those in the film industry. Because we are in love with computer graphics for the sake of art, we decided to come over from Phoenix to check things out. The Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics holds its show yearly, not always in California. This was the second most attended conference held by the group; this year, over 42,000 people attended. Two years earlier almost 49,000 people were in attendance. During the conference, we had a peek into the future, with many of the displays focusing on cyberspace, while on the conference floor, over 300 vendors showed us everything from 3D graphics software to virtual reality gloves. The 21st century promises to lead humanity into the machine.
With no recollection of exactly what this is we are looking at, I just remember that it was astonishing at the time I saw it. Computer graphics have been a large part of our lives for the past ten years, starting with a Commodore Amiga, Deluxe Paint, and TurboSilver, which became Imagine in 1990.
Robert Bell, Caroline Wise, and Grant Wiggins at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. We arrived in California a day early as we were going to Siggraph at the Anaheim Convention Center the next day; why not play a minute at the Happiest Place on Earth first?
There are other photos from this trip but the poor nature of the images are better left accumulating digital dust on some hard drive, but the memories elicited from photos of friends and family are worth sharing.
I look huge in this image; it must be the low pixel resolution.
Caroline Wise and Grant Wiggins. I met Grant the year before while he was working for the Scottsdale Airpark News; he interviewed me for an article about our work building computers and some of my thoughts regarding Linux and how it could be a platform for education (if I’m not mistaken).
Waiting to ride Space Mountain.
Watching the parade at Disneyland back when we were young. Caroline was 32, and I was 36.