Bet you’ve been waiting in anticipation for the rest of the story, haven’t you? First we had trouble getting functional wifi and then my naughty netbook computer wouldn’t acknowledge any connection. At all. I had to save everything up until we got home. It was frustrating but probably even more so for you, my darling readers!
When I wrote this post we were just past the halfway point of our road trip.
Please enter my Wayback Machine.
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We’re finally heading west instead of east, although we’re also pretty far south still! There’s cactuses and Joshua trees and horned lizards and lazuli buntings. There’s even warnings about javalinas – wild piggies – on the washroom notice board. Haven’t seen them though. Haven’t seen a roadrunner either sadly. I think they’re kind of like cardinals. Mythical.
On Day 18 we travelled from Mesa Verde, Colorado, diagonally down through Four Corners. We paid the Navajo Nation’s $5 each fee to stand on the actual corner, the only place in the US where 4 states meet:
That’s me and the Flat Rats twirling and trying to decide which state to be in: Colorado, Arizona, Utah or New Mexico. Arizona won!
So we continued on to Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona, where we took a Navajo-guided trip through the Lower Antelope Canyon. It. Was. Just. Awesome! From the surface you can’t really see the magic that lies just below:
That’s actually the end of the route as the group exited. Also note that I have several pieces of something, possibly sand, joining that annoying fibre stuck in my camera lens now. Boo. I haven’t time to spend cloning them out right now. Sorry about that. They unfortunately don’t come out of the camera because they’re inside between the lens layers. Which should be sealed better, shouldn’t it? I may need to consider a new camera. Again. Our vacations are hard on the poor things.
Back to the canyon. Inside the water-carved sandstone it looks like this:
And this:
That’s Thom’s hat! The floor was mostly sand but there are stairs and ladders to negotiate in the narrow channel. We spent most of our hour-and-some time looking up:
The light and the colours and shapes changed everywhere you looked! So incredibly beautiful. Our guide, Fern, was adorable and very knowledgeable about the best place to stand and what to look for to get the best shots. She even took a picture for us:
Can you see the Flat Rats in my bag? While I have this forum, I have to give a shout-out to Ken’s Tours. They were excellent and there was no feeling of being hustled or taken advantage of. With all the options available, we were glad we went with them. End of advert.
After that we went to see if we could find a place to camp. We drove through Page and out the other side to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. After driving over the Glen Dam and admiring Powell Lake we found the very nice campground at Wahweap above the marina with great views of the lake. Also some much-needed propane at the marina gas station for our stove. Here is the dam and the bridge on our way out the next morning:
That thing holds in the huge long and twisty lake that backs up north a long way into Utah. But we were headed south and west toward Grand Canyon. You know, one of those Bucket List things. More on that in the next post.
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