It is absurdly beautiful here, no humidity, less than 80 degrees, full of hummingbirds… Oh yeah baby!

The Abrams was a sister ship of the Dixie Arrow, the wreck we visited the day before this dive.  Unfortunately the visibility was not nearly as good, something I’ve been told is typical.  The viz was OK until about 45 feet under, when it deteriorated to perhaps 15 feet at best. With the surge, lack of visibility, metal things to smash against and the presence of large animals, this dive wouldn’t be easy for a beginner, but if you do what you’ve been trained to do - stay oriented, be close to a dive buddy, etc.  it’s not a big deal.  It was my 100th dive, and I’ve dealt with much, much worse, but I couldn’t help but think about how it would have appeared to me a couple of years ago.  A wreck reel would be a good idea here because it will give you a trail of bread crumbs to follow when the viz gets so bad that you can barely see your own fins.  Of course, lines can part, so always try to memorize some landmarks too - or, simply don’t go that far from the anchor; there’s plenty to see.

Above is my favorite shot of the whole trip.  Chuck is hanging on a weighted line dropped from the boat, doing his deco stop at 20 feet, illuminated by scintillating sun rays and accompanied by a sizable barracuda - standard behavior for this fish, which likes to hang out under boats and near divers who are doing their stops.  I used to think that it was the shadow of the boat, or maybe the smaller fish that usually hang out near a floating object, but I’ve been kept company by ‘cudas even when doing stops on drift dives with no boat or lines above, and even in absolute darkness, so I’m not sure what this is about.  I don’t find it threatening; perhaps they figure that I’m there, so I must have my reasons and they should hang out too. If the viz were better, you’d see the debris of the Abrams below Chuck, but the next image will show you what happened as we went through 50 feet of depth:

And it got much worse than that.  Of course, with the sun gone, it became colder too.

Visiting a shipwreck - a real one, not a reef project - is reminiscent of Orpheus’ journey to Hades.  The allegorical sequence of leaving the warmth of topside, surrounded by the happy excited camaraderie of my dive companions, then physically passing through a medium that gradually chokes off color, visual intensity, and temperature, eventually winding up in an inhospitable graveyard haunted by large menacing animals and the constant invisible dangers of diving, hits me over the head with unintentional references to the underworld.  I think that this is a universal experience for divers, even if they cannot articulate it.

Anybody who does this has spent a lot of time and money to do it and must really want to be there, and I am no different.  I am always thrilled to enter the water and fascinated by what I see there.  Returning to the surface, I am usually reluctant to leave the water; but I always have a sense of relief that I’m going back where there are people, sunshine, and laughter.

Coming up the line, we are shadowed by big sand tiger and other sharks ( many larger than me) that stay almost out of visibility, like shady characters following me down a dark city street.  To them, the visibility is not a problem at all; they know exactly where I am and what my visual limitations are.  The currents  that would sweep me away from the anchor line if I let go are no problem for the sharks; their thick bodies ripple with muscle as they casually position themselves just where they wish to be, maintaining a distance of 10-15 feet, right at the edge of the sphere of invisibility created by the darkness and the cloud of fine particles that surround us.  Accompanied by an entourage of smaller animals - each shark is its own ecosystem - they fade in and out of sight, but not awareness. What beauty - how lucky am I to witness this?

There is the intellectual aspect of understanding what has occurred at this spot - the danger, confusion, fear, desperation, bravery, and struggle of the Abram’s crew - as well as the physical evidence of not just an event, but an entire age gone by.  This ship was built not just by people who have passed on, but an entire age that is gone.  The passions, struggles and urgency which with these people lived are now represented only by these things lying on the bottom and our memories of them.  I know that a few survivors of that era are still around, but their numbers grow fewer each day, and they must feel like strangers in a strange land.  As I wandered the remains of the old steam engine, strewn about the bottom, I reflected on how much labor went into the creation of these objects, how the events that led up to their winding up on the bottom were the defining moments of some people’s lives and the end of others (in the case of the Dixie Arrow, people died, but on the Abrams, there were no casualties).  Now, in the summer of 2010, I can casually visit this site for my amusement. I hope that everybody who comes here knows what the place means, or meant, to somebody.  What will I leave for future generations to meditate upon?

Down on the wreck, you are always being watched.

Beautiful, miniature corals strain the water for their living:

Every source of food is exploited; my own body’s protein is mine only by right of strength, or at least intimidation.  The reef would be happy to make me part of it, and it wouldn’t take long.

Here is the whole bunch of images, plus a few extra “detail” shots.

The Dixie Arrow was a US tanker torpedoed by a German U-boat during WWII.  Here is the story, as taken from www.outerbanksdiving.com:

<built> in Camden NJ in 1920 and 1921, <the Dixie Arrow and its sister ship, the F. W.  Abrams>  met their end in 1942 only a few miles apart in the WW II Battle of the Atlantic off the Coast of Hatteras.  The Dixie Arrow was steaming from Texas City, TX, with crude oil when she was torpedoed by  Kapitanleutnant Flachsenberg in U-71 just south of Diamond Shoals on March 26th, 1942.  Despite being engulfed in flames,  the lives of many of the Dixie Arrow’s crew were saved when  ABS Oscar Chappell sacrificed his own life manning the helm of the crippled tanker to turn the ship and steer the flames away from the survivors gathered on the ship’s bow.  All tolled, eleven died  and twenty-two survived the sinking.  <… stuff removed> Today both ships lie in about 90 feet of water less than six miles apart.  The Dixie Arrow is better preserved:  The shape of her bow and stern are easily identified–with high relief in the bow section rising twenty-five feet from the ocean floor.  Both wrecks are regularly visited by large rough-tail and southern sting-rays, sand tigers, and huge atlantic barracuda.

So this is a storied wreck and also it hosts great clouds of life.  I was trying out a new camera and the pictures are kinda crappy, but here they are.  The most notable thing were the large number of robust, muscular sand tiger sharks, many of which were larger than us. At first glance you may think that it is scary to be around such large animals; indeed, they are kind of alarming, because of their numbers, size, muscularity, and how their mounths are formed into a permanent goofy grin of protruding sharp teeth.  But they treated us with a laissez-faire attitude.  I knew that they knew I was there, but I could also tell that I didn’t look like food.  At that moment, anyway…

Another thing to consider is that their mouths are not meant for eating large prey.  They don’t have a particularly nasty reputation for attacking humans, although it does happen occasionally.  Here you can see the relative sizes of man and beast; if anything, the size of this shark has been de-emphasized, because it’s farther away than the diver (who happens to be Chuck of Columbia Scuba).

Other large predators inhabit the vicinity, such as these 3 and 4 foot-long barracudas.

Above is a shot of the tanker’s giant steam engine surrounded by a great cloud of life. The engine is beautifully exposed, and you can see the crankshaft and boilers when diving (although not in this particular image).

Divers may be interested to know that in the summer, the water here is very warm.  The Gulf Stream makes a close approach to land here, and this wreck, being about 20 miles offshore, lies within it.  I wore  a 3-mil suit; the water temperatures were almost 80, avan at depth. There is a one-hour+ boat ride involved; the water has a reputation for being rough and you never know what you will find.  It was something of a challenge this day, and some people puked, but overall the weather was gorgeous.

The town of Hatteras is well-known as a tourist attraction and I won’t go into any detail describing it, except to say that there is at least one good dive shop here (mentioned above)  that dispenses nitrox, and there are numerous restaurants, quaint inns, and beautiful beaches.

It also has mosquitoes, and plenty of them.  Since I’m outside having my blood drained by mosquitos in order to be near a hot spot to make this post, I’m just going to slap in the rest of today’s photos without comment:

My father-in-law Bob hadn’t seen the canyon in years, so we spent an afternoon at the south rim.  The weather was variable; when we arrived it was sunny and warm, but within 25 minutes turned to cloudy, dark, and cold.  Soon it began to snow.

A Raven presides over the incoming storm clouds.

Clouds slide into the canyon; snow in the foreground.

The San Francisco peaks - over two miles high and 90 miles away - float on the horizon over Grand Canyon Village.  Flagstaff is right at the peaks; they serve as a navigational point for the entire region.

In this view from Hermit’s rest all the way at the western end of the south rim road, you can see the Hermit Trail descending to the river.

An unexpected elk encounter.

Bob’s hand next to a perfect woodpecker nest cavity.

The view on the return drive: the San Francisco peaks lurk behind an ominous cloud cover.

Moonrise over the Kaibab National Forest, south of the Canyon on the way to Flagstaff.

This is a retrospective of sunrise, sunset, or at least late afternoon images I’ve taken in the last 8 years or so. Sunsets and so on are another tired subject. Deal with it.  The sun is not in all of them, but all of them were taken at twilight times. I know this post is a little long but it is the best of all such images I have shot since 2001.

Kitakuni area, Okinawa

Grand Canyon National Park

The Masai Mara, Kenya

Petrified Forest National Park

Laguna desert, overlooking the Salton sea

Scripps beach, southern California

New York City

Looking towards the Denali area from over the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, while on a research flight

Siberia, from another flight

About 30 feet under, Kerama islands, Japanese Ryukus

Underwater off of Okinawa, at about 50 feet

Kyoto

Tokyo

Baja, Mexico

Somewhere in CA

Rocky mountain national park

Point lookout state park, Maryland

Rocky mountain National Park

Orvieto, Italy

Kaneohe, Hawaii

Sears tower, Chicago

Death Valley

Mount Baker as seen from Anacortes island

Vancouver island, BC

Arches national park

Monument valley

St. Louis

Wupatki National Monument

Lowell Observatory

Pictures of seagulls are a pretty tired photographic subject, but I like these.  Deal with it.

Here are some jellyfish I saw at the Monterey Aquarium a couple of years ago.

This one I saw during one of my irst dry suit dives.

We visited the north rim of the Grand Canyon recently.  From Flagstaff the south rim is only 1.5 hours away.  It’s only 10 miles across the canyon to the north rim, but it’s a 215 mile, 5-hour drive to get from the south rim  to the north rim lodge.  For this reason it only gets 10% of the visitors that come to the canyon each year.

The drive was memorable.  Leaving Flagstaff’s heavy forest of ponderosa pine, we soon passed through a transition zone of scrubby oak trees, then shrubs mixed with cactus, and finally into a barren and blasted desert. Continuing north, we went through the painted desert, whose magnificent cliffs frame the Colorado where it arrives from Utah.  At that point the river has cut an impressive symmetrical canyon that is of interest in itself, yet it pales in comparison to “the” Grand Canyon.  Vermilion cliffs national monument forms breathtaking scenery for the westward portion - it looks like mars.  A sudden rise in altitude, along with hairpin turns in the road, brings you through a small transition zone like Flagstaff’s, then abruptly into the ponderosa forest.  This forest - the Kaibab - is thicker and wilder than the Coconino forest around Flagstaff.

The north rim is more enjoyable than the south rim, because there are far less people, less development, more trails and less roads.  Pretty much everything about it is better!  The one exception is the long drive from Flagstaff.

I’m going to break this up into sections, because there are too many images to put in one post.  First, let’s do plants & animals.  I didn’t really get a lot of them, being so sick for most of the time (I had a wonderful case of food poisoning).  Plants sit still and are easier to approach… so there are more of them.  Luckily, I can go back pretty easily.

You can see from these that the north rim is more lush and heavily forested than the south rim.  This is a picture taken by my brother-in-law David; that’s me in the lower left corner.

There are beautiful meadows in the Kaibab forest around the rim.  We arrived within the blooming season, but if you come too early or too late, you will not see this kind of thing.  But if you time it just right, there are flowers everywhere.  Because of the flowers, there are hummingbirds everywhere; they are as common as starlings on the east coast, and much more common than robins.  Although you can hear them constantly, they are hard to see because they are so small and fast.  Crows and ravens are also everywhere up here.

BTW, this is really what is looks like - no color saturation enhancement here!

The forest around the rim has been heavily damaged by fires in the last ten years or so.  It seems as if half of the forest burned down.

All of the images above and more are included in the gallery below.

The grounds at Lowell are filled with Hummingbirds.  They are broad-tailed hummers, a species not found on the east coast, although they look almost identical to the ruby-throated hummers found on the eastern seaboard.  They have a distinctive metallic “churr” as they fly.  They are bold and extremely territorial, and will not hesitate to swoop down on a person in order to chase them away!

This guy always perches on the same branch of the same tree, where he periodically asserts his dominance by making fantastic flights up to high altitudes before plunging at high speed almost to the ground in great, looping dives.

In the scenic image, you can just barely see him at the center, a miniature bird-shaped dot.  These animals sooo tiny.

After completing my dive on Thursday, I drove across the state to visit with my Dad & his wife Sue, who have a place on the west coast in Estero (a suburb of Fort Myers).

We visited the Audobon Corscrew sanctuary, which has a 2.5 mile boardwalk through it.  Because of the boardwalk, and the fact that people can’t easily stray from it, I think the animals are particularly at ease here.  Of course, I didn’t have a good camera with me.  We saw all kinds of animals at close range.  It’s a birder’s paradise.

A brown anole, a very common sight in Florida.

A barred owl, roosting 10 feet from the walkway and completely at ease.

Another place we visited was the Lover’s key park.  It has great beaches, the fish are leaping out of the water, and there are osprey nests around.