Grand Canyon Photo Op

Last night I had some sort of weird 

dream about trying to take pictures with my old camera, but it ran out of film as I was snapping away, or the film broke inside the camera, or something. I woke in a semi-cold sweat in the middle of the night and calmed down when I remembered I now use a digital camera, so film isn't an issue.

That got me to thinking about a trip Ken and I took to the Grand Canyon about 15 years ago. We were staying in Flagstaff, AZ, so my Kentucky cousin and her husband, who were vacationing in California at the time, drove over to Flagstaff for a couple of days to rendezvous with us. We had dinner together one evening. We took some pictures of ourselves before heading to the restaurant, and this reminded my cousin of a funny story about her dad, my Uncle Barry. Uncle Barry was a Southern minister, very serious and proper:

Uncle Barry was on a little trip with his wife. At a rest stop he sat on a bench waiting for my Aunt Edna to show up so they could continue on their way. Meanwhile, a little boy came along and began snapping pictures of Uncle Barry. My uncle dutifully smiled for each picture and wondered why the boy wanted so many pictures, snapped at various angles, of him, a complete stranger.

Finally, after several poses and shots, Uncle Barry said, "Do you think your mother wants you to waste your film on pictures of me?"

"It's OK," the boy assured him. "There's no film in the camera."

My cousin, her husband, Ken and I thought that story was quite amusing.

The next morning Ken and I got up extremely early in order to be at the Grand Canyon for sunrise. I especially hoped to catch several dramatic shots of the sun rising over the rim of the canyon.

I took picture after picture. The sun rose fully, and I kept on snapping pictures with such wonderful shadows playing on the canyon walls.

At one point I remarked to Ken, "Boy, I'm getting a lot of pictures from this roll of film. I'm on picture #40, and I thought it was only a 36-exposure roll." 

I kept on snapping.

Once I got to picture #45 or so, a light finally went on in my head: My camera had no film in it. We went to a store at the Canyon, where a fellow at the photo counter took my camera into a dark room, opened it, and confirmed my worst fears.

We'd gotten up at 4:00 a.m., driven many miles, watched the sunrise over the Grand Canyon, and I'd madly snapped "photo" after "photo," or so I thought.

I don't recall laughing at the time, but I did think it was humorous that I'd worked with a film-less camera the very next morning after hearing the story of my Uncle Barry's photo shoot.

Grand Canyon photos from http://www.nps.gov/archive/grca/photos/