Verna and Bob's Weblog

When we arrived in Sedona last week, we stayed at a great hotel called the Matterhorn Inn. The room we had was on the level just above the shops along the main drag through town. There was a deck in front of our room where we could walk out and look at the activities on the street as well as see spectacular views of the red rocks. Click on the image below to bring up a giant panoramic image of Sedona.

When we were at the Canyon, there were several cloudbursts in progress. Lightning struck so close at one point that our SUV shook from the concussion. There was no problem a while later when it cleared enough to get this incredible panoramic view from Desert Lookout. Click it big.

In 1930, Fred Harvey commissioned Mary Colter to design and build a gift shop and rest area at the Grand Canyon’s Desert View scenic overlook. The Watchtower resulted from Colter’s efforts and was opened to the public in 1933.

The Desert View lookout and the Watchtower make for a climactic final stop if you are driving Desert View Drive from Grand Canyon Village, or a dramatic beginning if you enter the park through the East Entrance. From the top of the 70-foot stone-and-mortar Watchtower even the muted hues of the distant Painted Desert to the east and the 3,000-foot-high Vermilion Cliffs rising from a high plateau near the Utah border are visible. In the chasm below, angling to the north toward Marble Canyon, you can see an imposing stretch of the Colorado River. The Watchtower houses a glass-enclosed observatory with powerful telescopes.

I made this image of the tower using a vertical panoramic technique; first, I took three images of the tower in portrait mode, one above the other with slight overlap. I was standing about 30 feet (9 meters) away from the tower. The camera was my little Canon A710 IS and the photo stitch software was part of Canon’s Zoom Browser which came with the camera. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger view of this interesting, looming tower.