Somewhere over Colorado at 37,000 feet.

Early last week, I headed for Syracuse New York for a volunteer project for Civil Air Patrol. I am writing this on Wednesday, March 14, as a light snow is falling outside my hotel window. On a flight from Phoenix to Chicago, I was sitting by a window reading an article on my iPad. I happened to glance out the window and noticed down below us a huge scar in the earth. I picked up the iPad, quickly switched to the back camera and captured a few images. I thought that I recognized the huge scar as the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. A couple of things made me think that my guess must be wrong. First, we had been too long on the flight for us to be passing the Grand Canyon right then. Secondly, the canyon’s shape didn’t seem quite right. It wasn’t until later when a colleague of mine in CAP suggested that it might be The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado. Looking at a map in Google Earth, I’m pretty sure he’s correct. It looks like this park will be on my list of places to visit in Colorado.  The dark area in the lower left is a shadow of the plane’s window. That’s how close I was to have missed the view of the Black canyon.

About the photo: There isn’t much more to say about it. Captured on an iPad Air at f/2.4, 1/1900 sec, ISO-32 in automatic HDR mode. On most browsers, you can click on the image to enlarge it for better viewing. The rule for Cellpic Sunday is simple. The image must be captured on a mobile device.

John Steiner