My Favorite Canyon Lands

I cannot believe I stayed up this late — excitement over a new tool and an old canyon, I guess. An eagerly-awaited 3D mouse from Connexion arrived tonight.

This new device cuts my project time in half when creating Google Earth flythrough videos. Scripting takes hours for each minute of video. I enjoy working manually with KML tours. There are great advantages, like cueing up waypoints and paths with subtle fades and reveals. Scripting (often thousands of lines at a time) was a great way to learn some of the inner workings of this technology, but this mouse is pretty freaking compelling right off the bat!

For this first experiment, I chose to record some of my most treasured canyon areas: the spectacular, nearly untraveled Little Colorado Gorge and its connections through upper Grand Canyon. You will see portions of the experts-only descent from Horse Trail to the Confluence in this video, and a few segments of the journey out on the formidable Beamer and Tanner trails through the far eastern reaches of the National Park.I love this corner of the earth very, very much. The very last shot is “Conquistador Camp,” our favorite target when making treks out to the rim over the last 5 years. A detachment from Cortez’ main party spent a few days and nights here in the 1500s, searching for a way into the canyon.