In April 1998, I went to Zion National Park for the first time. I was not working at the time, but taking a year off. Sue in California — one of Walt's and my best friends — and I decided to drive to Utah to see both the Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks. We ended up not being able to go to Bryce Canyon, because a storm front moved over, dropping snow that closed all the roads between Zion and Bryce. We took a lot of photos in Zion, despite the bad weather. The ones I'm posting here are Sue's pictures. I don't think she'll mind if I post them.
The fact is, my Zion photos were destroyed in a film developing shop. Sue and I were both using film cameras back then. We didn't take our film to the same shop for developing. My photos included all the ones I took at Zion and at Death Valley that year. I took them to the shop, waited nearly a week, and then went back to pick them up. The man at the shop apologized and said his machine had "eaten" all my rolls of film. I didn't hide my disappointment. I told the man that I had driven nearly 2,000 miles through wind, rain, and snow to take all those pictures. He replied that he would gladly give me some new rolls of film to replace the ones his machine had chewed up.
Actually, I didn't remember that I had copies of Sue's Zion photos. I just found them this morning. Sue and I first met in 1975 in Paris. She was visiting her cousin Cheryl, who was a friend of mine and a fellow grad student at the U. of Illinois. The next time I saw Sue was in California in 1987, when Walt and I moved out there from Washington DC. That's when Walt met her. She has visited us here in Saint-Aignan at least three times since 2003. Before that, we three spent time in Paris, Vouvray, and Provence together, and a lot of time in California. I hope she'll have a chance to come back to the Loire Valley one day. The last time we saw her was in 2018.
One day soon, I'm going to start posting about France again. That's a promise. But this change of scenery
to places in America has been therapeutic for me.
These photos are nice and give a good idea of what Zion looks like, so different from Brycie Canyon. There are so many beautiful sites in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteSue is a good photographer and an artist.
These are just stunning photos, Ken.
ReplyDeleteWhat an experience to have lost all your photographs from your vacation. I can relate to that! Nice that you have Sue's who visited the same places with you.
ReplyDelete