Antelope Canyon

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Monday October 13, 2008

Today was Canadian Thanksgiving, and Columbus Day in the US. We celebrated by doing something that was on Kayla’s ‘must do’ list - a slot canyon. Antelope is one of the most famous and most photographed, so we had lots of company. But we didn’t care and had a great time.

Getting there was half the fun. We were shuttled in by a Navajo driver in the back of an open-air truck designed for lots of power in soft sand, much like the tour in Monument Valley. It only took about 20 minutes to get from the town of Page to the canyon entrance.

Slipping and sliding in the soft pink sand, we were jostled about and whipped by very cold winds, since it was only 12 C (54 F) today, even though sunny. We had our down jackets on and fleece gloves, still very much in use from the deep freeze in the Grand Canyon, but some of the other tourists, who didn’t know we would be traveling in an open-air truck, were very cold.

What an experience! Our guide showed Kayla how to set the still camera up for photos in the canyon, and then took several photos himself of special formations as he pointed them out. He kept reaching for Kayla’s camera, and she willingly let him snap away. For half an hour he guided 8 of us through the quarter mile canyon, and then we had half an hour of our own time to go back through, snapping at will.

Then back we went to Page, slipping and sliding again in the sand.

We had lots of time left in the day and lucked out with no wait for an oil change in the truck which took just 15 minutes at the local ‘jiffy lube’. What to do for the rest of the day? We had no desire to tour the Glen Canyon Dam, or to see Lake Powell except in passing, primarily because it is man made, even though very beautiful. Having calculated that we need all seven days to drive home because we want to avoid the deep freeze and snow going back north, and we want to avoid the interstates and large towns in keeping with the theme of this road trip, and it seems the only way to do that is to drive up the coast of Oregon, we decided to get a head start and drive on for a few hours back north into Utah.

A few hours later, we drove into Glendale Utah, grabbed the last site available at Bauers Canyon Ranch RV Campground, and hunkered down for another night of howling winds (yes, they are back - arghhh!) and below freezing temperatures. Almost all of the western US is in a deep freeze right now, and we want to escape it as quickly as possible. Guess we needed another several weeks to go further south.

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