Day 8 - Page, ARIZONA Day # 2

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We woke up and opened the curtains to find sunshine. Maximum temperature will be around 30 degrees. You beauty ! I chose a simple continental breakfast with toast with Philadelphia cream cheese, a strawberry yoghurt, corn flakes and coffee (can’t have cooked breakfast every day or we all know what happens then ?).

Only a short 1 minute drive to Chief Tsosie’s depot for the Upper Antelope Slot Canyon Tour. The tour goes for 90 minutes but it takes about half an hour to get there so we will spend 30 minutes inside the canyon. This adventure along with visiting Sedona were two things Kerry discovered early days when researching this holiday and neither of us had ever heard of them before.

The drive out was on a shuttle van and it was nice to see it was air conditioned (or maybe not ?). After 15 minutes we turned off road and started driving along a barren river bed. There was a resemblance of a track to drive on and we were third in line on the road as they had a convoy of nine vans all leaving the depot at the same 10.20am departure time.

There was about 14 passengers on each van. It was very bumpy on the track at times and lucky we had seat belts as there was a moment I thought I was on a roller coaster and I would have been thrown to the ceiling had I not had my seat belt on. We were seated in the back of the van under the Air Conditioning system and the problem was every time he did a sharp turn the water would fall from the system directly on us !

We reached the end of the river bed track and didn’t realise the entry to the canyon was right here where we parked. They were super well organised and every group had to be escorted in within a few minutes of each other so it was not overcrowded. You just walked right into the canyon walls. Our driver / guide was a Navajo chap and he knew exactly where to stand and get the best pictures. It soon became obvious that Kerry’s iPhone was taking way better images than my Canon SLR so I gave up. The guide soon offered to take the photos for all of us in our group changing the phone settings as he went. He knew how to operating all different phone types (he later mentioned he is well known for his photography talent).

The walk through was an amazing experience and to think this was only discovered in 1931 by a Navajo lady who had some sheep went missing and discovered the canyon by chance. When we got through to the other end it was back to a wide river bed so essentially the canyon exists in the middle of a river that only flows when there is a flash flood event and it has carved out the amazing landscapes with a swirling motion as the water is trying to get downstream. As the canyon is so narrow the water pressure is intense so for safety reasons they don’t operate in rain events and yesterday they actually cancelled all tours after the first early morning tour. At one point the canyon walls are over 100 feet tall. The photos were amazing so I have uploaded a few extras to share with everyone today. Please keep your comments coming as we are enjoying these.

After the tour we grabbed a couple of foot long subs from Subway and drove out to Lake Powell Resort to go on our 3.5 hour Navajo Canyon Cruise. It departs inside a National Park so we had to pay $30.00 entry fee (we had considered buying the $80- annual pass as we might be visiting other NP’s later in the trip). It was on a modern catamaran with two floors and only had about 50 onboard so lots of space. The boat (aka Ladybird) can reach speeds of 38 knots and seats were super comfortable.

Our captain Doug provided good commentary about Lake Powell and it’s history, with a fun twist at times. He has been doing this job for nearly 40 years. The Navajo Canyon runs off the Colorado River and is one of 96 outlets that form Lake Powell and were all created once the Glen Canyon Dam was constructed. The National Park have rules that prohibit stays for more than 14 days per calendar year so the really expensive houseboats are sitting in the marinas for 351 days per year (one just sold for $20M and rumour has it a golfer with initials TW owns it ?).

The Lake has three rivers that flow into it being the San Juan, Green and Colorado and most of the flows come from snow melt in the spring from the high mountains in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The lake reaches it’s peak height around the 1st July and then starts falling until around March when the next spring snow melt starts. The water level now is very low and the photos show a white high water mark which is about 131 feet above the current level. This is causing a lot of issues downstream as 30 million people obtain their water supplies from the Colorado River and Lake Mead which is further downstream is running dangerously low which provides water and electricity to Las Vegas. One of the amazing things about cruising up Navajo Canyon was the high cliffs and tapestries formed over many years as sediment falls down the walls.

We got back to the hotel just after 6pm and I decided to go for a swim in the pool to cool off and Kerry brought down a couple of Corona’s and Ciders to enjoy in the cabana area. Very relaxing and we could not bother going to dinner so we just had Tortilla Chips and Salsa watching The Voice America on TV.

Well our time in Page has been awesome, but is time to pack up again and head off tomorrow to cross into Utah with our destination being a small town called Springdale a mile outside Zion National Park.

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Comments

[Kathy Mills]

Thanks for the trip
Would love to enlarge those photos of Antelope canyon and put in frames. Absolutely amazing!! Thank you.

[Spanners]

Hi Kathy, those photos were all taken with Kerry’s iPhone so it will be interesting to see how they look blown up ?