Flagstaff, Ariz. • Benji Xie stood beside a trail in an Arizona canyon, his camera fixed on a waterfall cascading into a blue-green pool where people swam beneath a double rainbow.
Soon, the popular campground on the Havasupai reservation was inundated with water rising high above the shallow creek that runs through it.
Water sloshed up around tents, burying some in dirt. Tourists scrambled to benches, trees and caves as they sought higher ground. Some were stranded on newly formed islands, Xie said.
"Everything is brown and muddy now," Xie, a 25-year-old Seattle resident, said Thursday while awaiting his turn to be flown out.