For now here is a simple list of photos that are linked directly to some of the photos in the directory. All of these photos are ones I took in Arizona, and I will be adding many more of these (plus some from California) in the future.

Feel free to copy these for your own personal enjoyment or use on a web site. Any use of these photos by a commercial (for-profit) entity is prohibited by the appropriate copyright laws.

  1. A picture of Phoenix from South Mountain Park. This is the largest municipal park in the US, and is geologically interesting as a famous metamorphic core complex.
  2. An "ordinary" sunset over Phoenix. Just about every evening is a dramatic show in the copper state.
  3. A Mexican Grey Wolf, awaiting transport from a captive breeding program to the vast forests of Arizona. These were almost entirely extinct, however several were rounded up in Northern Mexico, and this program has re-introduced these beautiful animals into the Arizona wilderness.
  4. The most scenic mountain in AZ, Superstition Mountain. It is a giant pile of volcanic tuff, formed as part of the mid-Tertiary ignimbrite flare-up. I used to hike this one a lot. The Pima have many tales about this mountain, and tend to avoid it like the plague. Hundreds have died here since Spaniards first crossed the Phoenix valley in the 1500s, many from disputes over the legend of the "lost Dutchman's gold mine." Of course, a giant pile of volcanic ash is a poor place to find any such deposits. This mountain has also served as a backdrop for many movie scenes, such as "Raising Arizona" and "Jerry Maguire."
  5. Four Peaks, which dominates the central AZ skyline. The resistant peaks are a pre-Cambrian purple quartzite. This forms the southern portion of a large chain of mountains, called the Mazatzal Mountains. The Spanish conquistadores mined its peaks for the giant and perfect amethyst crystals found there, one of which became the Spanish crown jewel.
  6. Four Peaks, with winter snow and clouds. The interesting thing about the mountain ranges in the southwest is that they have very different climates, and ecologically isolated "sky islands."
  7. A colorful picture some where west of Sedona area (toward Jerome). Sedona is not far from the edge of the Colorado plateau (Mogollon rim), and contains many famous red rocks, like many places arrayed around the plateau in Nevada (Valley of Fire) and Utah (St. George).
  8. Sunset crater, a recently active cinder cone volcano NE of Flagstaff.
  9. Pre-historic Wupatki Indian village, N of Flagstaff, founded around 1100 AD. This settlement was abandoned several hundred years later, and probably had to do with a regional drought at the time. The people who lived here were probably Sinagua.
  10. My Mother and I, at the Grand Canyon, south rim. One of the coolest places on Earth!
  11. A rustic roadside view between Phoenix and Tucson on I-10
  12. The Superstitions from Highway 60 between Mesa and Superior. This picture gives you some idea of the appearance of the Sonoran desert, a very green desert with all sorts of plants and critters.
  13. A winter storm rolling into the Grand Canyon. It dropped a good foot of snow that night on the south rim.
  14. Another shot of winter storm rolling into the Grand Canyon. We went to a wedding reception that night, the couple had married near the bottom of the canyon and had hiked back out. Trouble is, some of their relatives were in no physical condition to hike out. When it became dark and the snow starting falling, a group of us hiked down the Bright Angel trail to get them out. Luckily for us, it was a nearly full moon, and this cloud show continued through out the hike in moonlight. This was also the only time I caught a Mountain Lion stalking me. You are almost always being stalked by one of these formidable animals in much of Arizona, but most of the time you'll never know it ever happened. If you are alone, small, and perhaps jogging for some idiotic reason, then one of these felines is going to go after you eventually. I saw it due only to luck, a flashlight, and the notorious reflectivity of a cat's eyes.
  15. The best sunset in the history of the universe. This is no shit. I watched this show go on for about an hour on a mountain east of Phoenix. Lucky for you, I had a camera along to share it. It doesn't get any better than this. Good thing I had six shots left, and noticed it was going to be a fantastic show early on. Thinking about how this happened, you had several very fortunate things occurring all at once. The cloud deck rose gently eastward, the desert west of the distant mountain range was free of clouds, and allowed a window for the sun to shine through as it set well over the horizon. The blood red color of the sky at the end was the most shocking thing to me. You may wonder if the film or other factors exaggerate this effect, but the truth is the film can't quite capture what I saw, so this is (unfortunately) a less dramatic show than I witnessed in person. You'll only see things this beautiful a few moments in your life, if you're lucky.
  16. Monsoon dust storm in Mesa, Arizona. Check out the trees thrashing around. The scanner I used recently isn't very good, so it unfortunately doesn't capture the details in this very sharp picture.
  17. Day after the first spring rain in the Sonoran desert. Already things are beginning to green up and some beautiful yellow flowers are visible in the hills behind.
  18. Several days after the above photo, and the desert is lush and green. This is a truly amazing desert. If you've never been to the Arizona Sonoran desert, you don't have the proper notion of what a desert can be. Add a little water, and get immense beauty following immediately. This is the most beautiful place on Earth!
  19. Early Mesozoic petrified log in the painted desert. When I first saw this thing scattered in wood-like bits around the ground, I thought it was real wood! The detail is amazing.
  20. Down the maw of the Little Colorado gorge, Navajo Nation. Distances are deceiving here. That is a group of rather large trees along the edge of the river. I tossed a stone over, and it fell for a good part of the minute before I heard the report from its fall. You do the math. This gorge figures into some versions of the origin beliefs of the Hopi people. It is a crack, now filled with debris and water, that connected one of the underworlds to the surface world. In most Hopi legends, however, the emergence to this fourth world occurred at the San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff.
  21. That's me, on the hunt for a vision, and the perfect picture. Yeah, you guessed it, I do my shooting with a camera, not a rifle. You have to pull of the road and get out of the car to find your vision.
  22. More red rocks and forest around Sedona, Arizona. Now you see why people like to go here. It is a kind of oasis, catching the rain shadow of the Mogollon rim to the north. "Mogollon rim" is what Arizonans call the edge of the Colorado plateau. Daily rains during the monsoon season keep the rim green.
  23. A vision, captured on camera, in Phoenix, Arizona. How could you not enjoy this? The monsoon season in August-September brings some spectalur cloud shows. As damp air rolls off the mountains and hits the hot desert, huge towers form in the clouds as if steam were being produced by this fortunate collision. Best shows start near sundown, as if the rays of the sun itself were holding back the deluge that is sure to follow.