RV entering Maroon Dells. —John Holod

Filming the National Parks

Can Be a Scary Undertaking

By John Holod

As I eased my new Canon HD video camera out the window of the tram I began to think that this might not be the best idea I had ever had. We were crossing over the Royal Gorge in Colorado and the only way to get the straight- overhead- looking- down- into- the- abyss- point- of- view-shot I wanted was to hold the camera over my head, stick it out the window and shoot straight down into the.Royal Gorge.

These new fancy HD cameras sure are heavy! I wondered if it was because the image on the screen is so much bigger. The only things keeping my camera from falling 1,053 ft into the Arkansas River below were my quickly weakening 56-year old fingertips! (I know I should have done more finger-tip push-ups before I began the shoot!)

The bad news was that if the camera fell the project would be over, I had no back-up. One HD camera was expensive enough. The good news was that if the camera fell I could be back at the pool in Tucson the next day sipping a margarita and consider my next occupation.

The camera slipped but did not fall. I got the shot. Later that day I almost lost the camera and my right arm on the Cog Railway going up Pike’s Peak. In Durango I nearly lost my head (literally) leaning out over the side of a train car trying to get the perfect shot on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. My head missed the over-hanging tree by inches!

Those old steam trains are a great piece of Americana with the coal-burning engines belching soot into the sky, that is until that soot lands in your filming eye and you have to go the emergency room in the middle of the night to get it washed out! Yea, that happened, too.

I won’t even bother to tell you about the time we got lost driving the logging roads in northern New Mexico trying to find the southern end of the Rockies, or hiking/filming at 14,000ft, and feeling like your lungs are going to explode, or having Jodie holding my belt as I hung over the edge of the Black Canyon in Gunnison National Park trying to get a shot of the river at the bottom, or almost being forced off the side of a cliff by a tourist in a rental car as we drove over beautiful 12,000ft Trail Ridge Road while filing Rocky Mountain National Park,or not knowing if the moose, elk, bison, and grizzly bears in Grand Teton/Yellowstone National Park were stalking us or we were stalking them while filming, or wondering if WE could keep our eyes and RV on the steep, narrow Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, which many say is the most beautiful road in North America.

Filming “The Great Rocky Mountain Adventure” was an adventure in itself! I just hope I don’t injure myself during the editing process. The film will be released Jan.2010, barring any “unforeseen circumstances.”

John Holod

RV Adventure Videos

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