Density altitude*, schmensity altitude. So, with the temperature being at 100 when I left Lake Havasu I was expecting a long take off roll. This wasn't the case, as the little engine that could did it's job more than adequately and the plane was off the runway with plenty of distance to spare. I turned north to make my way to the Grand Canyon. This wasn't in the original plan, but it was now right on the way to Bryce Canyon, Utah, or in the way as the case may be. Most of the Grand Canyon is now a no fly zone, probably thanks to some sniveling liberal who complains about every little thing that affects his life. Hey pal, you want no one around? Move to Mars! So you can't see most of the park anymore from the air, which totally sucks, but what are you gonna do about it? They do have a couple of corridors that you can use to fly across the canyon. The rim of the canyon is somewhere around 6000' MSL, give or take a thousand depending where you are in the park. The corridors flying northbound have you at either 11,500 or 13,500 MSL. So I am well up above the rim at 11,500, which actually provided some great views. But don't think I wasn't tempted to pull the power and just fly in the canyon to get a better view. Either way it is a completely amazing sight from the air, and I probably have over 100 pictures of the Grand Canyon that will go on the CD. After the Grand Canyon was a landing at Bryce Canyon, which is the highest of the airports at 7590 above sea level. But with the heat, the density altitude at the field was a whopping 11,400 feet. I flew the approach numbers just like the books says to do, and the landing was just like any other, except a little longer than normal, but shorter than I expected. I was expecting to use 4,000 feet of runway for landing, but I was down and stopped in like 2500 feet. The runway is 7400 feet long, so there was never an issue of making the landing for me. I got there with just a couple small puffy cumulus clouds in the sky, and enjoyed the cooler weather of 80 degrees over the blast furnace I left in the morning. Ruby's Best Western Resort is just up the road and sent over a complimentary shuttle to take me to the resort so I could have a bite to eat. I had a mighty fine steak sandwich with fries for lunch, and had them take me back to the airport. Fuel was cheap here, so I had them top me off, even though most people would say short fill it. But, I knew I had plenty of runway and I was off the ground in about 2500 feet, and was on my way. Just in time too, because just to the west was a huge thunderstorm cell that was throwing lightning at the ground like it was playing speed darts. The climb out was slow but the airport sits on a big mesa so there was no worry of hitting anything. I wasn't able to out climb the next mesa to the east, but turning south was part of the plan so I could get a view of Bryce Canyon. This may have been one of the few places on my trip that may have been better viewed fro the ground, but it's still a pretty awesome sight from the air. I flew around the mesa to the south and then headed east towards Colorado. I over flew lake Powell, which is a big contrast to all the red and orange of the surrounding canyons and mesas. Again, more pictures, which seemed to be all I was doing when I wasn't riding out the turbulence the mesas caused even if I wasn't flying near them. I wasn't able to get as close to Natural Bridges because a thunderstorm cell parked itself on the mesa just to the north. I didn't see any lightning associated with it, so I snuck a little closer and snapped a couple pictures of the whole park before getting away from it. The rest of the day into SW Colorado and NW New Mexico didn't provide quite the panorama that the Canyons did, but they still have some interesting rock formations and mesas. I made my stop in Colorado to lay claim to setting foot in another state I hadn't been to, and then raced a different thunderstorm cell to Farmington, NM. I made it easily, and the weather here was warmer than earlier in Bryce, but still much, much nicer than it was in the morning in Arizona. Today I was the picture taking machine, well over 200 pictures. Today's flying time: 4 hours 0 minutes For those of you that don't know what density altitude is, it's when the day time heat (or any heat really) causes the air to expand so that your airplane behaves like it is at a higher altitude than what it actually is. And of course the higher you go (actual or due to the heat) the performance of the plane decreases.