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Light & Airy At Golden Hour {Sisters Photoshoot}

Hey guys! It’s funny, I never really post photography posts on here anymore, do I? Maybe that needs to change!? Anyway, the other night my sister and did a little photoshoot during golden hour, and wow, I love that lighting sooo much! My sister is an amazing photographer and both of our photos turned out so pretty, so I thought I’d share some of them in today’s post!

Let’s start with the photos I took of my sister, then I’ll share the ones she took of me:

And now the ones she took of me:

I hope you guys enjoyed those and hopefully it wasn’t too boring, just seeing photos of us. XD If you’ve done a blog/social media post of a sister’s photoshoot you’ve done, make sure to link it below! I’d love to see it! ❤👍 Also, would you like to see more photoshoots and just photography posts in general? Let me know! 🙂

❤ Hannah

46 thoughts on “Light & Airy At Golden Hour {Sisters Photoshoot}

  1. i love this post Hannah! You guys are amazing at photography!! I would love to see more photography posts! also i was wondering what type of camera you have. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  2. You two are like the most adorable sisters ever! Also, y’all resemble each other a little. I love doing pictures with my younger sister.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. What adorable photos! You and your sister are so photogenic! My sister and I do do photo-shoots all the time…except I am generally the one behind the camera and she’s in front (I don’t like getting photos taken of myself much XD). I have posted quite a few of them on my photography blog I started a couple of months ago, if you would like to see our photos: thelittlephotohouse .wordpress .com (I spaced it out, so that it won’t go to the spam). It would be neat to see more photo-shoot + photography posts! I enjoy seeing what other photographers do, and what I can learn from them. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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Thousands flock back to pubs on Super Saturday as police chief criticises drunken behaviour

People have been flocking to pubs in their thousands – with some apparently flouting social distancing guidelines – as England’s most significant relaxation of lockdown rules so far came into force.

As new regulations cleared the path for bars to reopen – on what was widely dubbed “Super Saturday” – pictures showed drinkers packing beer gardens and outdoor areas.

Disorder in some parts of the country forced pubs to close early, with police making arrests after violent clashes.

But on a day that also saw hairdressers reopening, weddings allowed to take place in front of loved ones and people allowed to meet friends and family indoors, many people reported nightspots being significantly less busy than before the lockdown began.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was nice to see people out and about.

“Although there’s some pictures to the contrary, very, very largely people have behaved responsibly,” he told Sophy Ridge.

“It was good to see people out and about and – very largely – social distancing.”

The health secretary revealed he had his haircut yesterday and is “very relieved about it”.

John Apter, national chairman of the Police Federation for England and Wales, criticised the drunken behaviour of some revellers and said it was “crystal clear” they would not adhere to the one-metre-plus rule as restrictions were eased.

He tweeted: “Finished my late shift with the @HantsPolice Southampton City late shift. A busy shift, we dealt with anti-social behaviour, naked men, possession of class ‘A’ drugs, happy drunks, angry drunks, fights, more angry drunks and was called a fascist pig by somebody we tried to help!

“What was crystal clear is that drunk people can’t/won’t socialy (sic) distance. It was a busy night but the shift managed to cope. I know other areas have had issues with officers being assaulted. Now heading home, to those still on shift please stay safe.”

Other forces said they had been busy, with Devon and Cornwall Police saying they had received more than 1,000 calls, mainly linked to drink-related disorder and antisocial behaviour. Dorset Police said they had recorded 525 incidents in 24 hours.

West Midlands traffic police said they had arrested three drink-drivers, one of whom was violent towards officers.

However, other forces, such as Cambridgeshire, praised people for behaving responsibly.

Chief Constable of West Midlands Police Dave Thompson said there had been a “slow steady approach to the night time economy reopening in Birmingham”, with “licensees acting with real professionalism”.

And in Leicester, where pubs did not reopen due to a localised lockdown following a spike in cases of the virus, police in the city centre praised people for staying indoors and tweeted to say there was “not a soul to be seen” on Saturday night.

A number of pubs chose to close after disturbances in Nottinghamshire.

Police said three bars in Mansfield and Sutton in Ashfield, and two in Arnold and Newark had opted to shut early.

The Ravensdale pub in Mansfield posted on its Facebook page that it would be closed “until further notice” due to “irresponsible behaviour”.

Inspector Craig Berry stressed that the pubs, rather than police, had chosen to close the pubs, saying: “Officers were quickly on the scene to deal with a number of alcohol related anti-social behaviour reports including a smashed window and minor assault.

“As a result four arrests were made by officers and we supported licensees who chose to close their own premises.”

But he added that he was grateful to “the majority of the public who acted responsibly throughout Saturday”.

In Essex, Special Inspector for Brentwood Steve Weaver, reported that an officer had made several arrests just moments after he had used a tweet to encourage people to “enjoy yourself” but “behave” and be “responsible”.

He posted: “That didn’t last long. Disturbance in Brentwood High street assisted other units. 4 people arrested.”

Devon and Cornwall Police said it had racked up more than 1,000 reports by 10pm on Saturday.

“The majority of reports this evening have been linked to drink-related disorder and anti-social behaviour,” a spokesperson said.

But one couple out in Manchester, Charlie and Sienna, told Sky News they had anticipated bars would be far busier.

“It’s much quieter than we were expecting,” they said.

“But it’s a really nice atmosphere and the bar we went to felt safe. We’d definitely feel reassured to go out again next weekend.”

And the national chairman of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) said he believed as many as half of pubs had chosen not to reopen.

“I think it’s going to be difficult for pubs,” he said.

“They are opening up under uncertain circumstances. They don’t know if they’re going to get their customers back.

“What you are finding is, some of the pubs haven’t even bothered opening today – they want to see what’s going to happen.”

The caution around the relaxation among many was reflected by a new poll, which showed more than half of voters think the hospitality sector has been reopened too soon.

The Opinium survey indicated 52% believe outlets like pubs and restaurants are going back into business early, while 73% expect a second outbreak of COVID-19 this year.

It puts the government’s disapproval rating at 49% – with just 30% approving of its performance.

And the poll also found that 53% of people think the easing of the lockdown is happening too fast.

:: Listen to the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

Adam Drummond, head of political polling at Opinium, said: “While the government may be keen to reopen, the public are looking ahead and with trepidation and aren’t expecting this release to be anything but temporary.”

Meanwhile, new quarantine exemptions will allow major sporting events, as well as TV and film productions, to go ahead this summer, the government has said.

Silverstone will be able to stage races in August, and the move gives the go-ahead for international cricket, Champions League and Europa League football, the PGA British Masters Championship and the World Snooker Championships to take place.

Also, significant darts, horse racing and other sporting events are expected to follow, ministers said.

(c) Sky News 2020: Thousands flock back to pubs on Super Saturday as police chief criticises drunken behaviour

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product review, running

Light it Up!

***Disclaimer: I received a Spibeams LED hat to review as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out to review find and write race reviews!" The air is getting crisper, the smell of pumpkin spice is in the air, and it's getting darker earlier.  My… Continue reading Light it Up!


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Train Travel in Thailand

Traveling by sleeper train in Thailand is a great experience for world nomads and travel newbies alike. They provide a great adventure, allowing many travellers to experience a new way of travel. Trains in Thailand are cheap and save you the cost of one nights hotel so they are definitely worth looking into. Flights may also be cheap, but by time you factor in check-in times and traveling from airports to towns and cities, you might find that trains are the most convenient way to…Continue Reading “Traveling by 2nd Class Sleeper Train in Thailand”

Shopping in Bangkok

Triangular pillows (also known as mon khwan or axe pillows) are an symbol of all things Thai and are found all over Thailand from the backpacker bars of Koh Tao to the palaces of Bangkok. But as soon as you start looking to buy them, they suddenly seem to be something of a rarity. WHERE TO BUY TRIANGULAR AXE PILLOWS IN BANGKOK Triangular pillows are readily available at the Chatuchak market but unfortunately the market operates at weekends only, so it is easy to miss….Continue Reading “Where to Buy a Triangular Pillow in Bangkok, Thailand”


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Thiel Students Perform Clybourne Park

By Brian L. Brink

As Professor of performing arts Pete Rydberg put it, playwrights have one of the most difficult jobs ever. They write plays and then send them off to the world, he said, hoping those who perform them won’t mess them up too badly. Playwrights give birth only to immediately give the baby away, Rydberg said.

He said that he would feel “absolutely terrified” if the playwright for Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris attended one of the shows at Thiel, that ran from Thursday, Nov. 9, through Sunday Nov. 12. No college production, Rydberg said, could ever be on the same level as that of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, who staged the plays world premiere. Because of this, he would hope that Norris would see the passion that was put into this production, not just by him, but also the student actors.

When talking about one student, Talia Jackson, he said that the way she can speak paragraphs without opening her mouth is something that came only from her. Rydberg said that he can only give executable direction to the cast and those do not include how to look at their fellow actors.

However, Rydberg said, “getting it ready was a bear,” with the biggest obstacle being the language of the play. He said there is no polite give and take, and it imitates real life conversation, unlike the Shakespearean classic plays.

Another major challenge the actors had was having to play two characters each. He said that there are parallels between the characters of the first act and the characters of the second act. However, the actors did not make connections between their two characters until the last three weeks of production.

Rydberg said that he chose Clybourne Park for many reasons. The play is perfect for college, he said, because it opens a conversation that most students don’t think to talk about: prejudices and the use of labels when talking about ethnic groups. He said that students should be left questioning after the show is finished.

Which is why Thiel College put on a panel after the show to talk about those topics, along with the “white flight” of the 1950s and 1960s. The panel was moderated by Paul Miller, and consisted of: assistant professor of political science Marie Courtemanche, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college Liz Fombgen, Rromano Mitchell, Chimimaka Palmer, and professor of sociology Cynthia Sutton.

The Thursday night dress rehearsal was open to the public and brought in a crowd of a few dozen. Most were students that had to watch it for class credit which is why, Rydberg announced before the play began that, to get the credit was to get their playbill stamped after the panel.

The next Thiel Players production will be a musical adaptation of Love’s Labour’s Lost during the spring semester.

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What Is The Optimal Setting For Microdosing?

Episode 54

Tao Lin

Tao Lin, celebrated novelist and poet, describes the perception-altering effects of psychedelics and microdosing, and how they’ve influenced his outlook on life. Tao discusses the importance of listening to ancestral wisdom, and how plant medicines can be used with other complementary practices to improve our lives. We talk about the damages of modern life, and what a rural lifestyle could offer us.

Podcast Highlights

  • How psychedelics brought Tao close to abandoning technology and embracing a lonely rural lifestyle
  • How microdosing could be combined with complementary practices to shift perception in many different ways
  • How psychedelics can improve emotional regulation and make us calmer, more well-balanced people

Podcast Transcript

0:00:25 Paul Austin: Hey listeners, and welcome back to The Third Wave podcast. A little bit of a special episode for you today. Most of the interviews I’ve done as of late have been over Skype. But for this one today I went into Midtown, New York City, and interviewed Tao Lin, author of a brand new book about psychedelics called Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change. I first heard about Tao on Twitter when he was tweeting about microdosing. I just happened to come across his stuff. I had no idea who he was and then it turns out that a piece that the New York Mag published on microdosing a few months ago was including a diary from his book about microdosing.

0:01:08 PA: And so I dug a little bit further into Tao, looked at some of the past work that he’s done, and then asked him for an advanced copy of Trip, so that I could read it and interview him for the podcast. And this is one of the better conversations that I’ve had on this podcast, partly because it was in person but also because this provided an opportunity for us to dig into some topics that I think relate to our co-evolutionary history with plant medicines. And not only how we have this co-evolutionary relationship with psychedelics, but also how we have it with what we eat, with how we sleep, with how we exercise, etcetera, etcetera.

0:01:46 PA: So this is going to be a fascinating conversation. So just to get a sense for what it is, I’m gonna read the Amazon description of the Trip so that if you do wanna pick it up you can do that. “Part memoir, part history, part journalistic exposé, Trip is a look at psychedelic drugs, literature, and alienation from one of the 21st century’s most innovative novelists. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a new generation. While isolating himself to work on his novel Taipei, Tao Lin discovered the prolific work of Terence McKenna, the leading advocate of psychotropic drugs since Timothy Leary. Tao became obsessed with McKenna, whose worldview seemed to present an alternate way of being. In Trip, Tao’s first ever book-length work of nonfiction, he explores parallels between McKenna’s life and his own in a far-reaching search for answers to looming questions: Why do we make art? What is language for? And are there essential, universal truths out there, beyond our limited range of perception?”

0:02:38 PA: So, without further ado, I bring you Tao Lin.

0:02:48 PA: Cool. So we’re in Tao Lin’s living room talking about Trip, coming to you live. Tao, thanks so much for doing this.

0:02:56 Tao Lin: Thank you for coming here.

0:02:58 PA: I was just telling you the story of how I first heard about your work, which was I was on Twitter… And whenever I’m on Twitter, I like to search for microdosing so I can see what conversations are going on on Twitter about microdosing, and you were at the top. And you don’t have a photo on Twitter, so it’s like, Tao Lin. I’m like, “This guy is writing about microdosing and he’s getting like 70 retweets, [chuckle] but I don’t know him.” And then that story eventually came full circle. So I’d love to just start with that. Microdosing, how was it for you?

0:03:27 TL: I liked it a lot. I did LSD microdosing for two weeks. And I should add a disclaimer because when I tweeted this, Hamilton Morris responded to my tweet saying something about how if it was blotter or acid, I shouldn’t say the exact amounts. Or even that it is LSD because I don’t know. And later, in person, he told me about how he’s tested sheets of acid before and each… It varies a lot across the sheet. So with that disclaimer, I used between I think 10 and 15 micrograms of whatever that was.

0:04:06 PA: And was it LSD like you had tested it or you were like… Got it hooked up somehow, and then they told you it was LSD but you didn’t check?

0:04:18 TL: They told me it was this brand called Aztec Xtal.

0:04:23 TL: And it was my friend who told me that, and he bought it from the person selling it as that brand. But I didn’t test it, no. But it felt like LSD compared to the other blotter or acid I’d had [unclear speech]…

[overlapping conversation]

0:04:38 PA: So you’ve done LSD before, right? This isn’t the first time that you’ve done LSD with your microdosing too?

0:04:44 TL: No, I’ve done LSD probably 80 times before that, but I had never tested it. It was always blotter so… But this felt like all those other times and I liked it a lot. The days that I used it, I would just feel okay to good the entire day until I went to sleep. And I’d work better, and I’d biked those two days. I just like wandered outside and started doing something that would be good for me on it. And I felt much less bothered by compulsive negative thinking, which can bother me, which bothers me almost every day. I just keep thinking these negative things that I’ve already thought about, or that I’ve already resolved at some point but now I’m doubting the resolve. It helped with that. You were telling me that LSD led you to an ancestral diet. And in my book, Trip, I also talk about how in 2014, I found this book Cure Tooth Decay. And in that book, the author references Weston A. Price. And this cookbook Nourishing Traditions, and I started reading all that. I was curious how LSD led you to that.

0:05:56 PA: That’s a great question. I think it’s a similar sense of view that you talked about, in terms of, you wanted… It was this enhanced sense of self-care. And I think philosophically when we go through these experiences, these post egoic experiences where we shed much of the particularly Western conditioning of really in the 20th century has been the exploitation of the individual psyche by corporate interests. Which is largely driven from an extractive economy that takes more than it gives, which creates this system of imbalance which is then what leads to some of the ecological issues that we’re currently facing. And so, when I was able to step outside of those boundaries and look back and have perspective, and that combined with some of the reading that I had already been doing at the time, I don’t think… It wasn’t for me like, I did acid and then immediately I started an ancestral diet.

0:07:00 PA: To me, it was more like having those experiences with LSD got me to look at things in a different way. I could all of a sudden understand, based on science that I had read, based on stories, I could build this cohesive model of how I thought reality would be better. Because at the time I had struggled… I struggled, in some ways I wouldn’t say it was clinical depression, but I was born into a place where I didn’t fit or belong. And so there was never a sense of any belonging for me. So I always had more distant relationships. That was just difficult. So I struggled with a lot of things. And LSD helped me with that process of loving myself again and then picking out elements that I thought would help to facilitate that process, nourish that process. Diet, reading.

0:07:44 PA: I started to read quite a bit, because when I was younger I had read all the time. When I was seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 and then I got into middle school and high school. And then this conformist pressure that we go through. Which I think part of the reason it’s so bad in today’s society, we feel so much pressure from it, is ’cause we don’t have these rituals of initiation that we go through at that 13 or 14-year-old level. So we have a lot of, particularly in the United States, immature masculinity of sorts. So to me, it just… Yeah, that was a struggle for me. And so I played soccer, at the time I was doing CrossFit and then I found that. And I’m like this, to me, seems to work really well. So I tried it and I noticed that I just had more energy, that I had better mood, that I would sleep better. All these things we were racking up. And so now I’m in and out. I think with some of these things I will do to an extreme. So with diet, I did the Whole30. Are you familiar with the Whole30?

0:08:43 TL: No.

0:08:44 PA: So the Whole30 is when you cut out all grains and all refined sugar, and you cut out most types of vegetable oils, almost all vegetable oils. So only coconut oil, olive oil, real olive oil. And then meats, meats that are pasture raised. It’s like Nourishing Traditions and doing that every single day, that sort of diet and lifestyle. And it’s extreme and it takes a lot. And so now I’ve come back to a place of balance. Yeah. It’s just part of the self-optimization process that we, as a culture, are becoming interested in.

0:09:23 TL: Yeah. The big thing that made the ancestral diet convincing to me or made it seem like a good idea to look at Aboriginals for wisdom on diet and other things. But in terms of diet, I was really convinced by that by the Aboriginal aspect because I had been predisposed to be interested in Aboriginals, from encountering Terence McKenna a year-and-a-half before I read Cure Tooth Decay. Which I read because I saw that one of my teeth were turning black and I wanted to find a natural solution. So I went on Amazon and typed like, “Natural solutions for tooth decay,” and found that book. So when that book started looking to Aboriginals for wisdom, I remembered Terence McKenna was also telling me to look at Aboriginals for wisdom on plants and drugs.

0:10:23 TL: And I remembered in middle school listening to punk music that told me to pay attention to Aboriginals. And then gradually I realized how big of the bias modern people have against Aboriginals, thinking they’re just fighting all the time and having stupid names like Sitting Bear and stuff. I absorbed that a lot, I feel like. So it’s exciting to find out that actually they have a lot of wisdom and it can help me become less depressed, ’cause that’s been a big motivating factor for me in diet and drugs. I’ve always wanted to feel less bored and depressed and confused and anxious.

0:11:11 TL: I remember, I think that’s how I found out about organic food. ‘Cause in college I was googling how to be less depressed naturally, and I came upon people talking about pesticides, to avoid pesticides. And from there, I got into finally raw veganism and I was that for a while. But sometimes I would read articles about how fish oil can make you less depressed. And those would be convincing. But then I read this book called 80/10/10 by this guy Douglas Graham, who promotes raw vegan diet. And he had a sentence just saying, “It’s absurd to think of people eating seaweed. That’s never happened before.” And I just believe that. And I really believe that book for some reason. And I was gonna re-commit to raw veganism and it was two months after that that I read Cure Tooth Decay. And it made so much more sense. But it just underscores how little I should trust my current beliefs, because for so long I thought this is it, vegetarianism or whatever. And it took so long to get to here.

0:12:37 PA: Yeah, for me, I try to base some of those larger models by which I live, that form the maybe epistemic foundation of how I perceive reality. I think if you can base those on the sense of co-evolutionary principles, with a mutual understanding of what it means to be a human. So, in other words, we’ve evolved to be this way, and granted now people would say in the colonialist era, so over the last 400 to 500 years, that’s been heavily influenced by things like sugar, by things like tobacco, high percentage alcohol, so things like Jin and then coffee as well, right? So all of these substances that we’ve introduced, I think, have kind of pulled us away from some of this wisdom that we really evolved on because all those people who survived without tools, so to say, or survived without the amenities of modern civilization, like the safety of modern civilization, most people who die, died either very young, or very old. If you made it past a certain age, then you were much more likely to continue living for a very long time. And so, I think if… Then we can study. So Jared Diamond, you know Jared Diamond?

0:13:55 TL: I haven’t read his work.

0:13:57 PA: But you know of him? Guns, Germs, and Steel?

0:14:00 TL: Yeah.

0:14:00 PA: He teaches Geography at UCLA but he’s a popular anthropologist who writes about… He wrote this really good book comparing the pros and cons of modern and indigenous societies. So pros for indigenous society is child-rearing. The way they raised children is often, it’s more warm, there’s more time together. He talks about diet, he talks about sex. And then with modern civilization, he talks about things like vaccinations and what else, other elements of modern medicine. Potentially roads, the internet, for example, the communication style, styles of war, even. World War II compared to a war between two indigenous groups. Actually, with two indigenous groups, a much larger percentage of them die during war than even compared to World War II if you look at, for example, because the United States is a nation state of 320 million people compared to a group of 80, then…

0:15:10 TL: A smaller percentage die.

0:15:12 PA: Exactly. And that’s also, that gave me another really good model to look at, “Okay, what do I wanna choose from these co-evolutionary principles, the wisdom, and what do I wanna choose from what we’ve learned from modern day and science in terms of being able to manipulate reality in more precise ways?” And that’s where I think a lot of this stuff is going with psychedelics, it’s going to this sort of neo-indigenous way of living that combines what I call indigenous wisdom, with modern technology.

0:15:45 TL: What are some modern benefits you see to adding to a traditional shamanic psychedelic experience?

0:15:52 PA: I think really imbuing this greater sense of spirituality into the psychedelic experience. So, that’s what modern researchers have done so well. The first research study that was published on Psilocybin in 40 years was out of Johns Hopkins, where Roland Griffiths showed that psychedelics could induce a mystical experience. Which has these five qualities, two of which I’m remembering off the top of my head, ineffability and a sense of noetic quality. There’s three more others. That came from William James when he wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience, right? So the sense of laying the groundwork then for… ‘Cause really what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to say… This is the story they’re trying to build, is depression is not just an issue related to the biochemistry in your brain. That’s one factor, right? Like lower serotonin, potentially, but it’s really tied to larger psycho-spiritual factors about the fact that these… We both live in New York, it’s a very alienating place. All the concrete, all the people. This is not what we’ve been accustomed to for many, many thousands of years.

0:17:01 TL: Yeah, I’ve just been reading about the effects of EMF, electromagnetic fields, and it keeps seeming worse and worse to me. I just read this paper about, they put these silver head masks on people while they slept, who had auto-immune diseases like celiac, multiple sclerosis, arthritis. And 90% of them reported “definite or strong” changes in their symptoms after doing this. So it has a huge effect. And then I followed that guy who wrote the paper on Twitter and I started looking at some of his stuff…

0:17:39 PA: Who was that? Do you remember?

0:17:41 TL: I don’t remember his name, but I tweeted his paper and he’s talking about how in airplanes, EMF is terrible, the amounts. And how that can cause headaches and other things that people probably mis-attribute to jet-lag. And I also learned this other thing that people might mis-attribute to jet-lag called aerotoxic syndrome. Have you heard of that?

0:18:04 PA: No.

0:18:05 TL: It’s ’cause to get air into the cabin, they make half of it go through the engine to warm it, but then they don’t filter it again. So there’s all these tiny toxins in cabin air, except in the B787, the biggest and newest one. All the other ones have this. And I just learned of that two years ago, so now, after plane rides, I think of those two things, instead of thinking I’ve jet-lag.

0:18:34 PA: It could be something else that we haven’t quite understood so well, that doesn’t have mainstream recognition, right?

0:18:41 TL: Yeah.

0:18:41 PA: Yeah, ’cause I think they’re talking about going to 5G. They’re starting to roll that out and a lot of people are going to be interested to see what happens.

0:18:51 TL: Yeah, this guy had a link to something about how 4 and 5G are terrible for EMF.

0:18:57 PA: Even things like they’re starting to study the effects of psychedelics on immunology. So yeah, we’ll bring it back to psychedelics. On immunology because there’s also been a direct link tied between reduction of inflammation and depression. So in other words, this… Diet, right? That significantly reduces inflammation. I’m assuming something like EMF probably significantly erases inflammation. It seems like a lot of holistic… A lot of health issues can be linked back to inflammation. But not only inflammation. What we’re also learning is that we have more than just a brain in our head, but we also have a brain in our gut. And I think we have a brain in our… Maybe our heart or one other place. Three distinct areas with massive concentrations of things that are very important to regulate our system for optimal well-being. And so there’s also something that happens from emotional repression. So, Gabor Mate, do you know Gabor Mate?

0:19:58 TL: No.

0:20:00 PA: He’s done some really interesting work on addiction with Ayahuasca. He is out of Vancouver and he was speaking at The Assemblage. Have you been to The Assemblage?

0:20:10 TL: No.

0:20:10 PA: Are you familiar with The Assemblage?

0:20:12 TL: Yeah, Daniel Pinchbeck wanted to do an event with me but then he never emailed me. Did you read this paper recently where they coined the term psychoplastogens? It was this paper about how they found that LSD, nor Ibogaine, which is what Ibogaine metabolizes to, DOM, DMT and one more, I think. They grow dendritic spines, neurites, and they stimulate the formation of synapses also. And this paper talks about how there’s been previous research showing that Ketamine does some of these things also. And this paper said that LSD is way more potent than Ketamine and others at doing this. And before this, I didn’t know this. So now I have an explanation for why you can continue to feel good the day afterward or for weeks afterwards because it’s literally growing your brain.

0:21:24 PA: You’re literally repairing your brain. It’s like food for the brain.

0:21:28 TL: Yeah. The paper was talking about how DMT‘s half-life is so brief, it’s something like 15 minutes and yet it can create these lasting changes for days and weeks. And it seems kind of magical, like some video game item.

0:21:46 PA: Because it’s so new, it’s like… This is what I love talking about when it comes to psychedelics, is we’ve known we’ve had this tool box for well-being. And that’s including meditation, that’s including things like spending time in nature, diet and all of a sudden we have these little things over here called psychedelics, which are actually potentially way more potent than any of the currently tools that we have…

0:22:11 TL: Yeah, and I feel like people throughout history were probably microdosing psychedelics just from their diet. ‘Cause this tribe, the Sierra Miwok, they ate over 100 different plant species and used over 160 for medicine, and from all those plants, so many plans have DMT. And then a lot of plants are also MAO inhibitors. So you can create tiny Ayahuasca trips just by eating a huge variety of plants and herbs. So by taking more psychedelics, it can be kind of like eating more animal fats just to return ourselves to how we once felt.

0:22:53 PA: Right. Again, these co-evolutionary principles that we’ve developed over thousands and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years of wisdom and evolution.

0:23:01 TL: Yeah, ’cause people now only eat like 10 different plants. They’re getting way less of all these compounds, many of which… Turmeric’s a MAO inhibitor, I learnt in the past year. And tobacco also is a MAO inhibitor.

0:23:17 PA: And that’s another interesting thing about how it’s often indigenously before it was basically commodified by Europe to sell. Before that period, it was largely used… Tobacco was used as a medicine by people in the Amazonia area.

0:23:36 TL: Yeah, they put it in Ayahuasca, they used it in snuffs. But they never smoked it until centuries ago. But I feel like smoking it probably still isn’t that harmful. I feel like the thing people are missing is all the pesticides and additives in it. ‘Cause tobacco isn’t viewed as a food, so they don’t test the amount of pesticides in it.

0:24:00 PA: Right.

0:24:00 TL: There’s probably huge amounts of glyphosate in it.

0:24:03 PA: Which I think you wrote about in Trip. I was actually just reviewing my notes right before I came over here, and I only made a few notes. It was at the very end of the book where you mentioned, what is this?

0:24:14 TL: Glyphosate. It’s this compound that’s in this herbicide round up that Monsanto began selling in 1974. And this compound also, it’s in everyone now. It also has something related to microdosing. Because in 2017, they discovered that the body changes these compounds that your body makes out of DHA and EPA, which are found in animal fats, into these other compounds. Which they change again into these other compounds that this paper announced that it discovered, and these compounds are endocannabinoids that are more potent than the ones they make them out of. And the thing that connects us to glyphosate is because the conversion is made by CYP enzymes. And glyphosate inhibits CYP enzymes. So your body, if it has glyphosate in it, it won’t be able to convert these endocannabinoids into even more potent ones that we’ve always had before glyphosate, and also other pesticides that do this. So just by detoxifying ourselves of glyphosate, we can get gradually more stoned. And not just stoned, but inflammation will go down ’cause these compounds, they act both on CB1 and CB2 they found.

0:25:46 PA: Yeah, I read that and I was like, “Oh, that’s a really interesting connection that I hadn’t really recognized before.” But of course, made a lot of sense based on all these other topics that we’ve been speaking of. I’d love to go into, a little bit, your experience with psychedelics. So I remember reading your book and reading the story of how you threw out your MacBook after or during the midst of a suicidal experience. When that happened, how did that impact you? Were you just like, “Oh fuck, I just have to go get another one.” Or were you like, “Man, I really wish I hadn’t tripped that hard.”

0:26:32 TL: I was really happy after it ’cause after the trip for 12 to 24 hours, I was really convinced that I was just gonna move to a rural area within weeks or months and just stay there and not do much. And read and study and explore psychedelics, so throwing away my computer seemed like a really good step towards that. But then after 24 hours or so, I was still glad I threw away the computer because my brother a month ago, had promised me he would buy me another computer, so I got that computer. But my idea to “leave society” which is what I viewed as the message of that trip, continued. I just began to view it as a long term like decades or just something I’d work on for the rest of my life instead of something I’d do immediately.

0:27:33 PA: So, over time de-domesticate yourself.

0:27:38 TL: Yeah. De-domesticate and change what I fill my head with. And what I think about in my habits, what I eat, all these things we have talked about. And I have been writing about that, and that’s my next novel. It’s called Leave Society. In Trip, I focused a lot on psychedelics’ role in my recovery, but in this other book I focus more on other things like nutrition. And then I convinced my parents to get their mercury fillings removed and stuff like that. And I work on their health also, and their dog’s health.

0:28:25 PA: It’s so interesting ’cause after I went through these experiences on acid and I woke up to the sense of de-domestication, I remember telling my mom that she should probably feed my dog, or the family dog that we had, real food. That’s a thing you think about, right?

0:28:40 TL: Yeah, my parents’ dog was drinking this drink, Ensure, which is pure sugar with all these synthetic vitamins in it that they give to elderly people, I think, which was terrible for her. And now she’s been drinking raw eggs which she likes a lot, and eating other kinds of meat.

0:29:05 PA: Fixing one dog at a time. See, it’s like that’s really what the new slogan of psychedelic should be. Saving all the dogs. We love dogs.

0:29:13 TL: That’s just a secondary effect.

0:29:16 PA: Exactly.

0:29:16 TL: It’s so powerful that things around you start changing.

0:29:20 PA: Exactly. So you tried… So you had the suicidal experience. Was that the first psychedelic that you had done? So I know I remember reading your book, you hadn’t tried any drug up until the age of 27 and you’re 35 now?

0:29:43 TL: Yeah, I’m 34.

0:29:44 PA: 34? Okay, so you first tried “what you thought was a drug” seven years ago, even though you I think had consumed maybe antibiotics before that, and you mentioned…

0:29:54 TL: And coffee.

0:29:55 PA: Coffee.

0:29:56 TL: And I had gotten morphine in a hospital and I also listed all these pesticides, and things. That’s the only drugs I had encountered, but then the mushroom trip I described, that was the first time I’d weighed and dosed and done it with some amount of deliberation alone. Before that, I’d used it in seeing movies with friends or done other social things. That was the first time where it was all allowed to just act on me. And what was going on in my life, at the time I was trying to get away from pharmaceutical drugs. And I had encountered Terence McKenna seven months ago and all his ideas were in my head, and that led to me throwing away my computer. And then eventually writing a chapter about it. So this idea of leaving society keeps influencing me. I’ve nurtured it.

0:30:52 PA: And then you smoked DMT.

0:30:54 TL: Yeah, I smoked DMT. The one I described in my book, I did that like a year and a half after the mushroom trip, because I was really interested in psychedelics and was just also exploring that as part of leaving society. And I smoked it and I think I had a really good trip because I recorded video of it and during it, my face seems really expressive and at times happy and just really engaged. Seeming like I was engaged in really complex, fun phenomena but I don’t remember any of it. And then when I came back, my friend who had given it to me, I had never met in person. And when I came back, I forgot everything, my life and everything. And I saw this person and began to not know who it was and throughout the night, I suspected her of being a CIA agent or a journalist or someone who hated me and wanted to set me up for something. And that lasted for two hours and it was the most scared I’d been in my life, I think. Just thinking that someone had set me up and I was going to jail for 20 years or something. It was so terrifying but then it wore off really quickly to the point where I forgot how terrified I was, and I would have forgotten if I didn’t write a chapter about it.

0:32:23 PA: I had a similar experience when I did mushrooms when I was 19. Was I 19 or 20? 19 or 20. I think I was 20. And I used to sell weed in college, got caught, got out of it, thankfully, without too much. And was traumatized by it, because it was a three-week ordeal where I didn’t really sleep much, and etcetera, etcetera. So about five months later, I tried shrooms. I took some shrooms. I think that was the first time I had done psychedelics since that incident. I had a really bad trip, and the bad trip was this paranoia that these friends that I was with were actually the cops, police, and they were keeping me in this prison of sorts. And I was dead or I was dying or it was really like there was a sense of complete alienation and disconnection. And I realized that that had surfaced because I was needing to face how I had been hurt by this experience five months prior. And that story didn’t really come full circle for me until I smoked DMT in 2016.

0:33:47 PA: So for five years, whenever I would take high doses of psychedelics, I would get this recurring sort of paranoia with people around me. And then I smoked DMT, and I came out of it, and I had a… I smoked DMT and I had that bad trip for 10 minutes where the people who sitting for me, who, one of whom I knew quite well, the other was his partner. And we had spent the whole day together and so I knew her well, definitely, well enough. It came up that I thought, again, that they were these CIA agents, and they were out to get me. And then I came out of it and I talked to my friend about it, Brian, and at the crux of it was this sense of shame that I had around the fact that I was doing illegal drugs. And what Brian said, I forget what he said, but he said something like, “And we can’t believe that these are illegal, right?” It’s fucked up that they are.

0:34:38 PA: So there’s nothing that’s wrong with you. There’s nothing to be ashamed about. The issue is not with you, the issue is with society, the issue is with… And so that comes back to a part of your book that I was reading earlier today, which was Terence McKenna had this quote, which is like, “When you raise your children, do you want them to be raised as these cynical, intellectual assholes or do you want them to be raised as these people who are just fed the bullshit of the society and eat it up?” And so it’s like then how are we changing these systems so that there’s less of this paranoia, because clearly that paranoia wouldn’t exist if you had done this in a therapeutic center where you paid maybe $2000 or a retreat center where these substances are legal. That probably wouldn’t have happened.

0:35:27 TL: Yeah, I could have planned better also. I think something that would have helped is if I wrote down something, a note to myself, and gave it to Tracy to give it to me afterwards. Or just talked about what to do if I forgot everything. And also one thing is that I didn’t wear my glasses during it, and when I came back, I didn’t remember that I used to wear glasses, so everything was blurry. And I was just like, “I didn’t think this was because I’m not wearing glasses.” But yeah, there are all these obstacles to exploring metaphysical realms for modern people, like the CIA and all the stuff, the aboriginals didn’t have to deal with any of that stuff. They could get to it. So it’s even harder for us to get to explore what aboriginals explored.

0:36:28 PA: Right. Which is why some people predict with things like climate change, that’s gonna wipe out most of humanity, leaving us potentially back to a similar population size as what was the case in pre-civilization times. I don’t know if we’ll ever be that low, but I think there is this impending sense of apocalyptic doom.

0:36:53 TL: Yeah. We’re also really far into an ice age. The last 12,000 years have been remarkably steady climate-wise. And also, it’s been a long time since a major comet impact. The last one was 12,000 years ago. And people who write about this, Graham Hancock and others, they think another one’s coming soon. And that could set us back to aboriginal times.

0:37:23 PA: And I don’t know… And this gets to the question then, I think an important, maybe metaphysical question is, is that good or bad? In other words, what do we value most? The sense of human life, which is increasingly seeming to be the case. This basically obsession with this reality, this concept of reality that we have. Or is it about something larger on an organismal level like Gaia, the sense of the earth as an organism. Is that the priority? ‘Cause if that’s the priority, then shedding… We like to talk about people who are maladaptive. There’s this sense of… This separation that we’re seeing right now, I think on a cultural basis, which speaks to that. Some people are willing to adapt to new realities, the sense of legal Cannabis, the sense of legal psychedelics. And they’re adapting based on scientific principles, and often principles of ancient wisdom. And there are a lot people who are not adapting and that’s why Donald Trump is President.

0:38:21 TL: Terence McKenna’s idea on whether that’s good or bad, or he had an idea that relates to that, the end of history. He views the past 15-25,000 years as a brief transformation called history where the species will somehow emerge into a higher dimension or something like that. So in that view, everything matters because there is only a limited amount of time to get to that point where we’ll be at the end of history. And it’s interrupted often and there is a lot of dangers to it like nuclear war and nuclear power plants and stuff. In that way of viewing it, Gaia also can be prioritized ’cause when we leave the universe in the transformation, no one actually… Then the Earth would either be left behind as a placenta or a mother. Those are two things Terence McKenna says for earth. You’ve heard of the End of History?

0:39:30 PA: Not really, no. Was this the work that he did in 2012?

0:39:37 TL: Yeah.

0:39:37 PA: Or about it 2012? I see the I Ching right there, I’m noticing that, ’cause he obviously came up with the sense of the time-wave theory, that he wrote about… Did he write about that in True… It wasn’t True Hallucinations, it was the Archaic Revival, maybe?

0:39:51 TL: I think he writes about it in more than one book.

0:39:54 PA: Okay.

0:39:56 TL: Yeah, this was related to that ’cause he theorizes that time is a fractal wave that works on many levels. During our talk right now, we’ve resonated with the entire history of the universe from the Big Bang to the end just by having a beginning and end. And to graph this theory, he had to choose a date so he just chose 2012, but he stressed that the date can’t be known. He just predicts it will occurs decades to centuries from now, this transformation. He can’t see history going on for millions of years and people are just going planet to planet. He thinks like we’ll leave the universe.

0:40:47 PA: And what does that mean to him, that we’ll leave the universe?

0:40:52 TL: I think he stresses that we just can’t imagine it. In a similar way that a microbe couldn’t imagine that trillions of it would become a human because the microbe doesn’t even have a brain. That’s how far away it is from imagining its future. That’s how far away we should think we’re away from being able to imagine the future.

0:41:20 PA: Yeah, I read something about this recently but I forget the exact wording. But it was something along the lines of what you just mentioned as a comparison, the… These intellectual leaps, we could say, are… We can’t understand them with our current framework or hard-wiring or perception of reality. There is a sense of needing to live outside, I think. Well, what we’ve gotten into is this sense of three-dimensional… Yeah, a recognition of three… Yeah, yeah, obviously three-dimensional but things beyond that as well.

0:42:02 TL: Yeah, and time. We have [unclear speech] time.

0:42:04 PA: And yeah, it’s a lot about time, especially with industrialism. When we started actually having hours and minutes and seconds and nanoseconds and this atomistic. We approach things at the atom level, the very individual level, the sense of separation emerges, I think, from that. And I think maybe what Terence is talking about is a re-acceptance or a re-emergence with both… With first, probably, neo-indigenous wisdom, but then second, something like the singularity or… I think that’s what psychedelics are going towards as well, this sense of enlightenment or being able to kind of wake up, so to say, about how we live and what consciousness is and some of these questions.

0:42:52 TL: Yeah, psychedelics I think, give us intimations of the after-death state. If there is anything in life you could do to try to get close to that or try to predict it in some way experientially, smoking DMT or taking Psilocybin can give you that.

0:43:10 PA: Tell me about the hardest part of just writing the book. Was it the organizational process, was it deciding to write the epilogue in third person, was it your own personal transformation? What was the hardest part of, yeah, going through that process?

0:43:29 TL: I just tried to think about it and there weren’t that many hard parts. I enjoyed it a lot.

0:43:36 PA: Good.

0:43:36 TL: Probably the hardest part was just my life during that time. Often, I would feel uninspired and just depressed about life, but that wasn’t that hard either. ‘Cause since I started using psychedelics more, I don’t feel terrible for days at a time like I would when I used Adderall and Xanax. So relative to that, that’s still good but that’s still something I’m trying to improve, being more stable, having a more stable better mood throughout days and weeks.

0:44:09 PA: And microdosing, would you say microdosing… What was more effective for you? The maybe higher dose experiences, and I don’t know how often you were doing them, but interspersed, or something more consistent like microdosing? Or were they equally effective or… Yeah, I’d love to hear you talk about that difference for you.

0:44:24 TL: I think something in between has been most effective to me, like microdosing or between micro and medium dosing once every weekend. But also something that influences that is my life, ’cause in Taiwan when I was with my parents every afternoon I would eat Cannabis and we’d go hiking and I’d enjoy that everyday. But if I eat Cannabis and do other things that aren’t as reliably synergistic with it, then I don’t have that thing to look forward to everyday. So having some kind of steady life would work good with psychedelics, I think.

0:45:17 PA: Yeah, a life where you’re like… This is what I’ve struggled with in New York, is New York is a city that can be very anxiety provoking. It really creates a lot of anxiety for me. In fact, earlier today, just one of those days where I didn’t sleep well last night and then kind of woke and I had an early call. And then lost my MTA card, which I’m not happy about. I had a month pass on it. I’ve had to use it for like a week. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that, but it’s just like, “Fuck.” And then I’m becoming more attune or aware of my anxiety while here. And I’ve noticed that, for example, I know that tomorrow I’m pretty busy, but on Thursday I’m just gonna take like a full day off, just not work. Give myself a break.

0:46:11 TL: Yeah, rest is really good, I think.

0:46:13 PA: Rest is really good. And being in like in tune with that because when I first moved here, I started microdosing. And I was getting anxious and the microdosing was contributing to my anxiety because it can be so stimulating.

0:46:30 TL: Yeah. I found that also using it in a city. When I first started learning about the effects of EMF, electromagnetic fields, I realized that had been affecting me a lot and I hadn’t attributed it to that because I’d been writing in the library every day, where I’m surrounded by all these people’s cell phones and all these computers having microwaves come in. And I think it affected my ability to think and write sentences, and write and edit sentences. I would often spend a lot of time just feeling frustratingly unable to write. That got better when I came to my room. Even though my room, I can tell just from the wireless thing on my Mac book that there’s 20 different modems shooting microwaves at me and all the other floors with people with TVs and stuff, I felt better here writing, more able to write and think. So I think I’ll feel even better once I move somewhere more in nature.

0:47:37 PA: So you’re thinking about moving soon. Is that in the near future for you, would you say?

0:47:41 TL: Yeah. I’m trying to move upstate somewhere. Pretty much anywhere compared to here would be better for EMF and all these other things like air pollution. So I’m looking forward to that. I’ve been here since 2001.

0:47:58 PA: Oh, wow. Okay. So 17 years, which is a long time. I moved here 10 months ago and I’m already like, alright. I’ll give this about two more years.

0:48:17 PA: So just a brief, brief interruption. This is Paul, your host, just for some news announcements. There’s been some big things since we had our last podcast. First of all, LSD and magic mushrooms could heal damaged brain cells in people suffering from depression because they are shown to stimulate the growth of new branches and connections between brain cells, which could help address conditions like depression and addiction. So we kind of knew this already and that psychedelics show this potential for generating neuroplasticity, and now we have additional data that proves that to be the case.

0:48:52 PA: Canada becomes the second country to legalize Cannabis use. And with that Act passing, the Cannabis Act, legislation will take effect in just a few months. So the first G7 nation to legalize Marijuana. This is a huge, huge step.

0:49:12 PA: Third thing, a new study has been released that shows that Ayahuasca tea rapidly helps people overcome severe depression. Long confined to indigenous societies of the Amazon rainforest, Ayahuasca is now being researched by scientists as a potential medicine for depression. In an article published in the prestigious journal, Psychological Medicine shows Ayahuasca providing rapid and sustained antidepressant effects for people with severe treatment-resistant depression, including 29 patients who were administered a single dose of Ayahuasca or placebo, and those who received Ayahuasca scored significantly lower on both depression scales. Exciting, but again, not really the newest of news.

0:49:55 PA: And finally, psychedelic drug use is associated with reduced partner violence in men. Psychedelics may help improve emotional regulation and keep our violent tendencies at bay. Our very own Patrick Smith published an article about this on Third Wave which will be linked back to in the show notes. And now we’ll get back to the show.

0:50:23 PA: Have you noticed an improvement in your eyesight at all?

0:50:26 TL: No.

0:50:26 PA: While microdosing?

0:50:28 TL: While on it? Yeah, maybe.

0:50:30 PA: Okay. Maybe slight visual acuity. And this is what Terence McKenna wrote about in Food of the Gods with this sense of, we might’ve had this co-evolutionary relationship with microdosing. It helped with probably visual acuity. So you would have stories of like the Bwiti tribe in Gabon who uses microdoses of Iboga to help with hunting.

0:50:48 TL: Yeah. Psilocybin increases edge detection.

0:50:52 PA: Yes.

0:50:52 TL: So you can notice more, but I didn’t think about that while microdosing. It affects so many things that if I don’t think about something I won’t notice it and try to use it.

0:51:02 PA: That’d be a curious, interesting experiment to do though is… It seemed, I don’t know if it was with acid with me, it was definitely with Psilocybin. So there might also be a slight difference in how those are operating, but I think that, imagine if you could repair eyesight through microdosing Psilocybin. That seems to have happened with me. I don’t really need glasses so much anymore. I might have to squint every now and then, but it’s pretty good. So anyway, yeah, just like another interesting tidbit about what I’ve noticed with that.

0:51:40 TL: There’s something that’s, I think, in the brain that’s also in the retina or something. It mentioned that in this paper about psychedelics being able to grow dendrites and things. I think it’s that when you stimulate the 5-HT2A receptor, that eventually makes you grow more brain neurotrophic factor or something.

0:52:01 PA: BDNF.

0:52:01 TL: Which is a protein…

0:52:03 PA: BDNF, yeah.

0:52:04 TL: That stimulates growth of neurons and stuff, and there’s something like that in the retina I think, so I could see that. But I’ve noticed psychedelics improving my sense of smell, just being able to smell more things.

0:52:16 PA: Does it help put you more in your body and less in your head. Do you notice any impact in that? So we’ve only been talking now for about an hour, but at same time I get the sense that you’re a very cognitive person, what’s… Do you know your Myers-Briggs?

0:52:30 TL: No.

0:52:30 PA: So mine is INTP. Do you know… Are you familiar with Myers-Briggs at all?

0:52:36 TL: Not that much?

0:52:37 PA: Okay, So it’s I and E, so introversion and extroversion. It’s N and S, so N is intuitive, S is sensing. It’s T and F. T is thinking, F is feeling. And it’s J and P. P is, I believe, perceiving and J is judging. So introverts get more of their energy by spending time alone. Extroverts get more of their energy by spending time with people. Intuitive people think about conceptual ideas. Sensing people think about the things tied to the five senses, what’s going on around them. Thinking people are largely driven by logical, rational. Feeling people are very, they’re empaths. They’re really heart oriented, and then Ps can adapt easy. Js wanna go with a plan, right?

0:53:23 TL: I feel like I’m introverted, and then all of those other things, except I only became adaptive since using psychedelics and encountering Terence McKenna and trying to change. Before that, I was the other thing, not able to change.

0:53:40 PA: More judging, which is, and these are… So it’s like you go, you’re like an INTP or you’re an ISFJ. Or you’re a ENFP, so you’re, kinda it’s like I and E scale of one to 100. You’re like 80I20E, right? Sensing intuitive scale of one to 100, you’re like, I’m like probably 70% intuitive, 30% sensing. So I think more conceptually, but I still have, it’s just not as strong. And so this, what’s interesting though, what you mentioned about like psychedelics, and adaptive, like you’ve changed to be more adaptable. We A, know that activation of the five… It’s in, like this is what’s interesting about language because we’ve actually now tracked that sense of I’m adaptable to this phrase adaptability, which we’ve discussed, which is directly tied to activation of the 5-HT2A receptor and thus production of BDNF. So this ability to learn new things and adapt again, which is why microdosing as a tool is so interesting in terms of we’re having so many people who are struggling to adapt and that’s what leads to personality change.

0:54:47 TL: LSD does take me out of my head, but I think I view it more as it just puts me in a different metaphysical place where I have different associations and memories than I normally do, and I have a different momentum than I normally do. So I don’t just keep thinking the same thing. I feel slightly outside of my mind and able to like think, actually think new thoughts, and focus on the world and my body. So it does do that.

0:55:14 PA: And I’ve seen in myself that link to a significant reduction in rumination, because when we’re in our head so much in our heads we have this concept of time, past, present and future. I’m reading Ken Wilber. Do you know Ken Wilber?

0:55:26 TL: No.

0:55:27 PA: The American philosopher. He writes about integral theories, theories of the self and what plays a role in the development of the self, and these different, we have the level of the persona, we have the level of the ego, the organism, and then transpersonal realms, like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, down to unity consciousness. He has this kind of ascending and descending scale and Ken Wilber talks a lot about bringing spirit into various things and…

0:55:55 TL: Jim Fadiman has a big influence on your thoughts related to psychedelics, right?

0:56:01 PA: Right.

0:56:01 TL: And I just started reading Ayelet Waldman’s microdosing book, “A really good day“, and she has been talking to Fadiman a lot and she points out that psychedelics make her less impulsive, ’cause she notices that usually she just gets upset or irritated immediately and on a microdose day she feels there’s some space where she can actually think about it and make a choice, and I felt that I related to that.

0:56:35 PA: So this is like emotional regulation in some ways, and they just published a new research paper in the past like month, month and a half, that showed that psychedelic users have better emotional regulation, right?

0:56:47 TL: Yeah. She talks about how psychedelics reduce suicide and depression, and wasn’t there a study saying that men who’ve used psychedelics are less likely to be violent?

0:57:02 PA: And that’s, that was the study that they linked it to emotional regulation then, because the ability to regulate your emotions and work with them then leads to usually better decision making, like more mature decision making, so to say. Right, the sense of evolving, the sense of adapting, right? And this gets right into then, when people use psychedelics they go through this post ego initiation, where they’re able to see outside the boundaries of this individual ego, and really reflect on the self and I think that gives perspective and a lot of healing for a lot of people, because there’s then the sense of connection to something greater than ourself, which I think provides hope and optimism. It’s kind of what you were talking about. How you still see the world as kind of the shitty, tough, these elements of existentialist. You still see that, but now you also see the beauty and the awe and the mystery and the joy and this other half of the duality, which is what I was talking about with Ken Wilber is duality, and that’s an important part to emphasize. Is the bad comes with the good, the light comes with the dark. This yin yang.

0:58:06 TL: Yeah, and I feel like the more I learn the more terrible it seems, but also the more hopeful. Like learning about MK-Ultra and going a few books deep into it. There’s this one book that I don’t talk about in Trip, called Surviving Evil and it’s about this woman who in the 1970s, when she was like 18, she was put in near continuous seclusion with her arms tied behind her back and they gave her up to eight drugs at a time, and two complete drug washouts, which meant they just took away all the drugs at once and then let her go back to normal, and all these other atrocities. So, after learning about that the world seems more terrible, but the more I learned about nature and, for example, with the ancestral diet, the more I learn about these things the more empowered I am to change myself, which is good.

0:59:14 PA: And it’s, I’m so glad you brought that up, ’cause this is exactly what we’re doing research at Third Wave. Those are now… We wanna directly explore the relationship through microdosing and the sense of autonomy, ownership, like taking better self-care, and once we can tie that together with research then, I think, there’s gonna be a lot of adoption of these substances that are really medicines and foods and things that can bring a lot of help. It’s exciting, it’s really excited. Well Tao, we should wrap it up. Any last things that you wanna say about where people can find your book. What are your future plans? A year, two years from now, are you giving any talks are you…

1:00:00 TL: I just put out my book and did all the, finished the book tour and all the readings. So I’ll just be focused on writing my next novel, “Leave society.” Thanks for having me on.

1:00:11 PA: Totally. Yeah, it was great to have you.

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The Best Grand Canyon Viewpoints From North Rim

Are you planning a visit or hike in the Grand Canyon National Park area? Here is our recommendation for the best Grand Canyon Viewpoints from North Rim. We love Toroweap Overlook with spectacular Toroweap formation and Colorado River in steep gorge 3,000 feet (915 m) below the rim. Thanks to two nights in Tuweep Campground, we could admire the sunrise and sunset and listen to the sound of the Colorado River. During the night on North Rim Campground, we could delight the milky way from the highest point of Grand Canyon at all. Now we share our experience of how to get there, where to stay, what to do, and more. Finally, as usual, we give you some photography hints.

This article may contain affiliate / compensated links. For full information, please see our disclaimer here.

Toroweap Overlook, Tuweep Campground

North Rim of Grand Canyon is quieter, more remote and offers fewer services than South Rim. This rugged portion of Grand Canyon National Park receives fewer visitors and offers a more outdoor-minded experience. That’s why we like this part. The four plateaus run along the North Rim offering a breathtaking array of sights, a range of geologic features and miles of territory to explore. They are:

  • Kaibab Plateau called “Mountain Lying Down”
  • Kanab Plateau meaning “Willow”
  • Uinkaret Plateau called “Place of Pines”
  • Shivwits Plateau, meaning “Whitish Earth” or Coyote Springs”.

In this article, we share two favorite places from North Rim of Grand Canyon, which is: Toroweap Point on Uinkaret Plateau and North Rim on Kaibab Plateau.

If you want to visit the South Rim of Grand Canyon, check our pictures from the best viewpoints and tips which help plan your trip around Grand Canyon in this post.

Toroweap Overlook, Toroweap formation and Colorado River

Our selection of maps and guides:

Arizona Trails Northeast RegionArizona & The Grand CanyonArizona and the Grand CanyonArizona & the Grand Canyon 2020
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Grand Canyon North Rim

North Rim is also the highest part of Grand Canyon. Point Imperial, the highest point on the North Rim at 8,803 feet (2,683 meters), while South Rim’s highest point is 7,522 feet (2,293 meters) above sea level. Due to its elevation, the North Rim is also cooler in temperature and experiences heavy snow in winter, resulting in a shorter season. The road to North Rim might be closed from November till mid-May.

North Rim Grand Canyon Weather

We have collected some weather data for you. In the chart, you can see average temperatures at the North Rim throughout the year.

North Rim Grand Canyon Weather

In this chart, you can check expected rainfall shown as average precipitation in inch for each month. It looks that the best is May and June, but please remember that North Rim road opens on May 15th.

How to get to North Rim?

Grand Canyon National Park’s North Rim is located in Northern Arizona, 220 miles by road from the South Rim. Its visitation is only one-tenth that of the South Rim; however, it is certainly within reach.
Take the scenic Kaibab Plateau-North Rim Parkway (Route 67), leaving U.S. 89A at the junction at Jacob Lake. This road follows 43 miles through forests and meadows to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. Drive offers wildlife views; you can encounter bison and falcons and other animals. Highway 67 is closed from the first heavy snowstorms in November through May 15.

Grand Canyon Maps

If you are planning a visit Grand Canyon for several days and you want to see all its parts and most exciting places, it pays to buy a set of 3 maps: Grand Canyon National Park Map Pack Bundle. National Geographic Trails Illustrated’s three map collection provides a comprehensive overview of the entire park and its neighboring areas. The set includes Grand Canyon North and South Rims with enhanced detail maps around the central Grand Canyon, including Grand Canyon Village and the Bright Angel Trail. Moreover, you get the Grand Canyon East and Grand Canyon West map. We like this set of map, because they have a good scale and they are waterproof and tear resistant.

We also use Grand Canyon Trail Map. A new, more detailed 7th edition has been released in 2020, which is excellent. It’s worth to buy it. Trails have trail ratings, text descriptions & statistics. It includes 100ft contours, shaded relief, a UTM grid for use with GPS, springs & drinking water, backcountry use zones, and much more. Very durable. Most importantly, very accurate. If you plan on doing any backpacking in the GC, this is the one to buy. It includes more detail, particularly if you want to get a little away from the regular routes.

Our selection of maps and guides:

Arizona & the Grand Canyon 2020Grand Canyon Trail Map 2020 Hiking Grand Canyon 2020Grand Canyon Map
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sunrise at the north rim of grand canyon national park

What to do on North Rim?

We went there for sunset and stayed until the sunrise. During the night, we admired the milky way. To experience the wonders of the North Rim, you might begin with a short walk on a paved trail from Grand Canyon Lodge to Bright Angel Point, which provides a spectacular view of the canyon. It’s also an excellent spot for taking photos. From this point, you can see Roaring Springs more than 3,000 feet below the rim. It is the sole source of drinking water for both the North and South rims. Roaring Springs begins as snowmelt on the Kaibab Plateau, gushes out of the rocky canyon wall, and then gradually capture and pump back up to the rims.

From Bright Angel Point, there are also excellent views of Bright Angel, Transept, and Roaring Springs side canyons. The South Rim and the San Francisco Peaks are visible in the distance.
Two driving tips offer spectacular views too.
One is Point Imperial, which is 11 miles from Grand Canyon Lodge and is the highest point on either rim. Second is Cape Royal, 14 miles from the junction of the Point Imperial and Cape Royals roads.
You can also check our Grand Canyon North Rim Hikes recommendations in the chapter, below.
Finally, check great tours to the Grand Canyon on Viator.com which has the best offer!

Grand Canyon North Rim Camping & Lodging

Camping is permitted only in designated campgrounds in the North Rim, and reservations fill up quickly, because of the short season. You have to make a reservation at recreation.gov or call (877) 444-6777.

North Rim Campground

The North Rim Campground has 83 sites and can accommodate RVs. You have to make reservation at recreation.gov or call (877) 444-6777.

Cottonwood Campground

Cottonwood Campground is located halfway down the North Kaibab Trail along Bright Angel Creek. An overnight permit is required to camp and cost $10, plus $8 per person or stock animal per night. You have to purchase backcountry passes ahead of time. Grand Canyon Backcountry Information Center is located in Flagstaff, Arizona: 1824 S. Thompson St., Suite 201, AZ 86001; phone number: (928) 639-7875.

Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim

Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim was designed in the 1920s by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood. The lodge is an informal and spacious hotel. Constructed of massive limestone walls and timbered ceilings, it features dramatic vistas of the canyon. Accommodations are in heavy demand from May through October. So you should try to make reservations several months in advance at https://www.grandcanyonforever.com/. Grand Canyon Lodge has also Dininig Room.

Lodging in Kanab or Page

If you like small towns, we highly recommended staying in Kanab, Utah, or Page, Arizona. They are an excellent base for exploring the north part of the Grand Canyon and the area. They have great accommodation and restaurants with good food. Our favorite lodging in Kanab is Best Western. If you prefer RV Campground our favorite in Kanab is Hitch-N-Post RV Park.
In Page, we also stayed in the Best Western. They offer good quality at an affordable price. But both in Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona, you have a lot of other lodging possibilities. You can check prices on hotels.com, which offers great prices and frequent promotions.

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Grand Canyon North Rim Hikes

Below are a few an easy-moderate trails recommend in this part of the Grand Canyon. There are recommendations from North Rim and Toroweap. But there are many more, of course. Prepare carefully for this trip if you plan a few days camping at the Grand Canyon. Take maps, guide, and GPS. And if you plan to camp at one of the campgrounds of the Grand Canyon area, check our Havasupai Packing List in which we recommend trekking equipment for Grand Canyon area, camping gear, trekking clothes, and more advice for hikes into the Grand Canyon area.

Best Easy Day Hiking GuideGrand Canyon Trail Map 2020 Hiking Grand Canyon 2020Hiking the Grand Canyon
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Transept Trail from North Rim

It’s an easy and short hike. The trailhead is on the Grand Canyon Lodge, and it’s only 3 miles hike. Elevation is 8,160 feet, gain 100 feet. This trail follows the canyon rim to the North Rim Campground. Views are beautiful.

Grand Canyon North Rim hikes from Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim
sunset in Grand Canyon North Rim

North Kaibab Trail from North Rim

The trailhead starts in Grand Canyon North Rim, and it’s a strenuous trail. Distance and hiking times vary a lot; it depends on you, how long you want to hike. You need a permit for this trail if you’re going to stay overnight. The elevation is 8240 feet, and gain is -5,760 feet. It is the only maintained trail into the canyon from North Rim. Even a short hike to Coconino Overlook (1,4 miles round-trip) or Supai Tunnel (4 miles round trip) can give you an appreciation for the canyon’s abundant natural beauty and immense size. You can also take a strenuous 9,4 mile round hike to Roaring Springs, or a two- to three-day round trip trek to Bright Angel Campground, 14 miles below the North Rim at the canyon’s bottom. But remember that you need a permit.

Cape Final Trail from North Rim area

This trailhead is located 2,5 miles north of the Cape Royal parking area. It’s a moderate hike, which takes 4 miles round-trip. Elevation is 7,850 feet and gains 210 feet. This walk offers a magnificent view of the canyon.

Tuckup Trailhead from Tuweep Campground

Our favorite hike from Toroweap Overlook is The Tucup Trail, which gives you a spectacular taste of Esplanade slick-rock. The trail is 3 miles (5 km) long to Cove Canyon. You will be rewarded with endless views of the Grand Canyon area. And you can listen for the roar of the Colorado River.

How to get to the trailhead?

Access the Tuckup Trailhead is on the north of Tuweep Campground or, if camping, from site number 10.

How does this trail look?

Toroweap Overlook is dramatically different than other Grand Canyon viewpoints. Tuweep peers out over a steep gorge set in a broad corridor 3,000 feet (915 m) below the rim. Walk to the edge is a breath-taking experience, because Toroweep Overlook is the wildest of viewpoints, and there are no facilities.

What is the difficulty level, and how to prepare for this hike?

It’s an easy-moderate trail. It leads through the plateau above the cliff of the Canyon. There is no water available, so take a lot of water and nutritious snacks for your hike. Especially during summer, when it’s sweltering. The area is rocky and desert. Watch your step to protect the delicate ecosystem and stay on the trail. Above all, watch out for cactuses that densely cover the plateau, because you can hurt yourself with cactus spines. Take trekking boots with excellent traction and trekking pools.
And finally, be careful of the edges. A 3000-foot (910 m) abyss is spectacular and offers dramatic views, but it might also be dangerous if you step to close.

Cactus, Grand Canyon North Rim hikes from Tuweep Campground

Saddle Horse Loop Trail from Tuweep Campground

It’s an easy and short walk with spectaculars views. If you have only a few hours on Toroweap it’s worth to take this trail. This 45-minute loop offers breathtaking views of the Colorado River in the steep gorge below the rim. It’s also a colorful walk through the native plant gardens protected and nourished by beautiful displays of micro-biotic crusted soils. Every inch of crusted toppings signifies 10-years of growth and erosion.
Access to the trail is along the road between Toroweap Overlook and Tuweap Campground or from the trailhead near campsite number 5.

Grand Canyon North Rim hikes from Tuweep Campground

Toroweap – the best of Grand Canyon Viewpoints

Why is Toroweap so breath-taking? Why for us it’s the most beautiful view of Grand Canyon and Colorado River? Because it’s pure wilderness, it’s a remote experience. It’s a unique place when you can hear a sound of silence. This place’s not too popular, so it’s uncrowded because the road is challenging. It requires not only a 4×4 car but also the skills from the driver. There are no handrails or other security features, too, so it’s rustic. Pure nature itself; space, the abyss, and the sound of the Colorado River.

toroweap overlook sunrise Grand Canyon

Geology of Toroweap formation

The view from Toroweap Overlook is dramatically different, especially if you visited North Rim and South Rim Grand Canyon viewpoints.
Toroweap Overlook peers out over an abrupt gorge set a broad corridor 3,000 feet (915 m) below the rim.
Eight million-year-old lava lows and conical black cinder cones stud the landscape. Toroweap formation area is similar to the rest of Grand Canyon but includes a more recent chapter of volcanism.

toroweap sunrise Grand Canyon

The Toroweap Fault underlies the valley, crosses the Colorado River, and continues south up Prospect Canyon. Volcanic activity began along this fault around seven million years ago. Beginning about 1.2 million years ago, lava flowed into Toroweap Valley, forming the flat-bottomed valley we see today. Vulcan’s Throne, Mount Trumbull, and the Uinkaret Mountains are all the result of volcanic activity.

More than a dozen times, lava spilled over the canyon rim, damming the Colorado River. Remnants of these flows and dams are visible just west of the overlook. Sediments clinging to the canyon walls high above the river indicate the formation of large lakes. The river eroded the lava dams and continued its downward cutting.

From Toroweap, it is less than one mile across the canyon to the Hualapai Indian Reservation famous from Havasupai Waterfalls on the South Rim, making this place one of the narrowest and deepest segments of the inner canyon. The colorful red-rock of the Hermit Shale and Supai sandstones to the east contrasts with the black, basaltic lava flows to the west.

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Toroweap Sunset Grand Canyon

Driving to Toroweap formation and Tuweep Campground

The Toroweap Overlook is located in the western part of the park on the North Rim. Driving to Toroweap Overlook is an adventure itself. Not every driver can do that, and no every car does. As a result, bring tire plugs and a portable air compressor to repair flat tires. The road is primitive with sharp rocks, deep holes, dust. It’s a rough road. Due to this, it is recommended to have 4×4 to get to Toroweap Overlook and Tuweep Campground.
You can choose one of three main routes to Tuweep from AZ 389 between Fredonia, Arizona, and St.George, Utah. And it takes you two to three hours’ driving time.

  • Sunshine Route: from Fredonia, Arizona, by Country Road #109. Wich is 61 miles (98 km) primitive road featuring sharp rocks, wash-boarding, and dust.
  • Clayhole Route: County Road #5 leaves AZ 389 at Colorado City, Arizona. It is 56 miles (90 km) long and impassable when wet.
  • Main Street Route: BLM Road #1069 and County Road #5 from St. George is 90 miles (145 km) long. This scenic route is impassable in winter due to snow and mud.

Our selection of maps and guides:

Southwest MapRoadTrip Arizona & New MexicoArizona & The Grand CanyonArizona & The Grand Canyon
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Driving to Toroweap Overlook

Tuweep Campground

Tuweep Campground is one of our favorites in Grand Canyon National Park (the second is Havasu Falls Camping on the South Rim of Grand Canyon). Why we like it so much? Because you can hear the silence. You can admire the Grand Canyon rim. Above all, you can listen to the sound of the Colorado River. Finally, sunsets and sunrises and stargazing from this edge moved us to tears. There is no civilization, coverage, electricity, or water available. There is only you and the infinite space of Toroweap formation.

Tuweep Campground permits and facilities

First of all, you need a permit to stay overnight. Advance permits are required for camping at Tuweep Campground and backcountry use areas. You can obtain a permit at go.nps.gov/tuweep. Permits cannot be issued at Tuweep, but after 15 of November, you can ask a ranger about the provisional permit. If there are no other reservations, you can get it at Tuweep. We got a temporary permit for two nights. One night costs 13 $ (November 2019). However, if you plan to be during the season, you have to apply for the permit in advance (a minimum of one month before arrival) because the place is gaining popularity and might be full.

There are no facilities, except for composting toilets and picnic tables. There are nine small-group campsites for one to six people with the maximum two vehicles, and one large-group campsite for 7-11 people with a maximum of four cars.

Tuweep Campground

Tuweap Campground rules:

  • vehicles and vehicles combinations longer than 22 feet (6,7 m) are prohibited (this is total length)
  • campers must arrive by sunset
  • fires and charcoal grills prohibited
  • store all food and garbage in a vehicle, pack out all trash
  • seven-night limit.
Tuweep Campground

If you can’t stay at Tuweep Campground the best place for staying is Kanab. We love this small town with great lodging, food and perfect armosfere. Our favourite lodging in Kanab is Best Western, and if you prefer RV Campground our favourite in Kanab is Hitch-N-Post RV Park.

Check lodging prices in Kanab on hotels.com which offers great prices.

Photography Hints

What season is best for Grand Canyon North Rim photography?

Toroweap Point is open all year; we love this place after a season in October-November. North Rim season is shorter. The road is closed from the first snow in November till mid-May. The best time to visit is in the fall (from September till the beginning of November) at the end of the tourist season.
Both these points: Toroewep and North Rim are much less prevalent than in the Grand Canyon South Rim. There are very few tourists here so that you can focus on photography in peace. You don’t have to fight for a spot 😉

More inspirations:

Where, When, and How to Capture the Best PhotosBetween River and Rim Arizona: The Grand Canyon State125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography
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tree at sunset Toroweap Grand Canyon National Park

What time of day is best?

For both North Rim and Toroweap is good to be on sunrise and sunset too. You have different light on the rocks and canyon. But if you have only one or a half-day and you have to choose the time, it’s better to take pictures from both points: North Rim and Toroweap Overlook at sunset.

What photographic opportunities are there?

The essential difference between Toroweap Overlook and North Rim is that you can see the Colorado River from Toroweap. But you won’t see the Colorado River from the North Rim. So if you have only one day and you have to choose, the most beautiful is Toroweap formation. For us, it is the most amazing and breathtaking place in Grand Canyon National Park at all.

Torowep Overlook
From the Toroweap Overlook, you have a view of the extremely colorful Torowep rock formations and the Colorado River. It is the narrowest part of the Grand Canyon, and that’s why it’s such a spectacular view. You can also take a short walk along the rim and photograph cactuses or dead trees on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

North Rim
North Rim is the highest part of the Grand Canyon at all, so photos from this point are spectacular due to differences in height. In good weather, even South Rim can be seen from the Bright Angel Point. Rock formations are incredible so that you can take exciting shots.

Check also our photos from South Rim of Grand Canyon to find more inspirations!!!

milky way seen from Toroweap Grand Canyon National Park

What gear should you take?

First of all, tripod is must-have. Tripod is necessary for landscapes for sunrise and sunset. We recommend a stable tripod because you will take photos over the rim. Don’t take too light tripod; the wind can be intense. We have been using Sirui for years, they are reliable and durable tripods.
Do not forget also Remote Control Shutter Release. It is much safer to use it over the abyss, and you don’t lose your balance using it. So you do not have to lean too often over the tripod. Our choice is: Camera Remote Wireless Shutter Release Intervalometer which is perfect also for night photos – milky way and stars. You’ll be over the gulf when it’s dark, therefore take also a headlamp and gloves. They are essential for your comfort, too.

Camera. If you read our earlier articles you know that we use Canon and Nikon. Agnes uses Nikon D750, and Chris Canon EOS R. Both cameras were ideal for Grand Canyon National Park due to their quality and flexibility. They are light enough as well to pack into a camping backpack.
Lenses. Above all, for photos of the Grand Canyon National Park it’s best to have a wide lens. Take the widest (ultra-wide recommended) and fastest aperture lens you have (good options are Canon 16-35/2.8 or Nikon 14-24/2.8).
This time at the Grand Canyon North Rim Chris used also Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM and Agnes used also Nikon AF-S FX NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G .

With memory cards, it is easy. You always should buy the fastest and most reliable ones. For years we were using SanDisk and Lexar CF and SD cards for the reason that we never had any issues with them. This is why we can recommend them to you.
Finally Filters:
Minimum: Circular polarizing filter. Please make sure it fits your lens diameter. We recommend Heliopan or B+W filters.
Optimum: Circular polarizing filter, and ND grad filters (we suggest Lee soft edge 0.9 and Lee reverse ND grad to begin with). In the case of ND grads, you will need a holder as well.
Finally, Maximum: Circular polarizing filter, ND grad filters (minimum Lee soft edge 0.9Lee reverse ND grad and a holder) and full ND (Lee Big Stopper or Little Stopper).

Does it require any hiking or other activities?

It depends on you and the time you have. In the chapter above, you have a few recommendations on the hiking trails that are rather easy, and you will have beautiful views. But you don’t have to hike there. It’s not necessary to take photos.

Toroweap Overlook
From the parking lot to Toroweap, you have 2 minutes to the rim. From Tuweep Campground, it’s about 20 minutes to the rim. But you have to watch out for the edge of the rim. Remember, you are standing over a gulf. It’s not worth to die for one photo. So choose a safe and stable place for photography. Do not place the tripod on edge. Don’t get close to the side, either. You don’t have any security or railings there. It’s pure nature and wilderness. So be very careful.

North Rim
From the parking lot to Bright Angel Point is 15-20 min hike. But it’s easy trail, and the path is wide. The Grand Canyon viewpoints are secured with iron rails, so the place is rather safe. Interesting Grand Canyon viewpoints are also at the height of North Rim Lodge. We were taking pictures of these points during sunset. From Bright Angel Point, we photographed the sunrise. However, sunset from this point is also impressive.

What kind of clothes do you need?

It depends on the season you are going to. But even in summer, the differences between day and night temperatures are significant, so it is worth taking warm cloaths. The best idea is to pack thermal underwear. If you stay overnight for sunrise, take a sweatshirt and windbreaker jacket because the winds can be intense. Furthermore, hiking boots are must-have, too (our choice is Mammut ). We highly recommended also trekking poles. If you are going to sleep in a tent, take a warm sleeping bag and pad mattress.
Finally, we’ve prepared a complex packing list for camping in the Grand Canyon. The list is called Havasupai Packing List, but it contains necessary camping gear throughout the Grand Canyon National Park and Southwest in general. Including camping gear, cooking equipment, clothes, safety, and more. So check it, please prepare properly for your adventure.

How long I need to get great pictures here?

If you can take pictures both at sunrise and sunset, it would be great, and that would be the best. A day or two in good weather is enough.
However, if you have only one day and you have to choose, it’s better to take pictures from both points: North Rim and Toroweap Overlook at sunset.

More photo inspiration and tips from the most beautiful and exciting places in Arizona, you will find in our Arizona Photo & Travel Guide!

Grand Canyon North Rim at sunset

Sources of information about Grand Canyon, f.e. geology and history: Grand Canyon National Park and http://www.ohranger.com/

  1. I remember visiting the Grand Canyon once, but many years ago when doing a road trip of the US. That said, I didn’t have an eye for photography as I do now, so this post is super helpful. The Toroweap is probably my favorite, just for that viewpoint. I’d like to invest in a tripod too for my travels, so will definitely take a look further at your suggestions.

  2. Ok, first off…your photos are AWESOME!!!!! I love them. I havent been to this part of the world yet but hoping to tick off the grand canyon in 2020. Havent actually thought about what to do there so your guide on the north rim has given me some food for thought, so I have bookmarked this page for future reference. Great guide guys! Loving your blog posts.

  3. Love that lead photo of you, so cool with that amazing view a backdrop! We have only visited via the South Rim, so I loved reading about, and especially enjoying your photos, of South Rim views. I’m attracted to the fact it’s so much less crowded too. Toroweap in particular looks like a must-visit for views, which you can enjoy without all the usual trappings of high tourist numbers.

  4. The North Rim was such a spectacular spot to visit.  So glad we did not miss it when we visited the Grand Canyon.  We hit many of the viewpoints on our visit.  But the hike along Toroweap path sound great.  Such amazing views of the steep sides of the Colorado River.  We are so sad we missed sunrise and the twinkling Milky Way on our visit.

  5. This is an amazing article on Grand Canyon viewpoints. I have never been here but it is very much on my list. And that is because of all the natural beauty it has to offer. Your pictures do complete justice to that beauty. What great shots! I like the fact that North Rim is more offbeat and that is what makes it so attractive to me as well. The Toroweap Point looks fab.

  6. Great tips!! I visited Grand Canyon few years ago and I did have a great time, I also remember dipping myself into a hot spring which was great because not a lot of people were there. Your recommendations were great and I am glad to inform you that I have visited most of the places and my fav was the overlook of Toroweap. Next time I would love to gear myself appropriately.

  7. I visited Vegas a few years ago and did not make it to the Grand Canyon sadly as my daughter was very young and we could not take her on the chopper at the time. I have read a few posts past that visit including yours which makes me think I should have visited it and enjoyed the road travel and a bit of hiking. Good to know that North Rim of Grand Canyon is quieter and not as busy as some of the other parts. I prefer the off beaten and areas where there are less tourists . The views are just jaw dropping and the there is a reason why this is so popular and visited by millions every year. Your photo points have worked as these amazing clicks add life to your post. Thanks for sharing

  8. Grand Canyon is a dream for me. I have been waiting to visit it. You have provided the best detailed guide for me. Including Photography tips, timings, gears, seasons , routes, viewpoint etc …this guide is ultimate. Thank you so much for putting everything together in one place. Great job.

  9. The photographs are really awesome. I have seen great photographs of Grand Canyon and these are one of the bests. To be honest, I had not known about North Rim and South Rim. I would definitely want to visit Grand Canyon and would prefer visiting the offbeat Nort Rim. Thanks for those wonderful photography tips as well.

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