February 3, 2015

February 3, 2015

We left before dawn this morning heading north.  A rare winter vacation.  It is a long six-hour drive to the town of Page on the opposite end of Arizona.  Page sits on the Colorado River in between the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell.  Outside Page, we stopped at Antelope Canyon Tribal Park on the Navajo reservation and signed up for a tour of the Lower section known as “the Corkscrew”.  Since it is winter, visitation is slow and we get a private tour led by a retired Navajo Indian.  We hiked a few hundred yards down a dry wash and then descended a metal ladder into a crack in the ground.  Antelope is a narrow slot canyon cut into the sandstone by the occasional summer monsoon deluge.  Slot canyons can be deadly at that time.  Today it is dry.  The allure of Antelope is that the sandstone walls have been cut smoothly in sweeping shapes that look like chocolate mousse.  In the summer when the sun is overhead, narrow shafts of light illuminate the canyon floor.  Our Navajo guide led us through the narrow recesses.  Around every corner he would point out a rock formation that resembled some creature or face.  Annoyingly he also kept grabbing my camera to take a photo of Aimee and me.  That is not why we are here.  We are enjoying the beauty and artistry of Mother Nature’s carving and hoping to get a shot worth displaying on our wall at home.

After the tour we drove southwest of town and hiked out to Horseshoe Bend where the Colorado River nearly makes a complete circle.  A million years of downward rock cutting has entrenched this ancient oxbow within a deep canyon.  We have been here before, but I am hoping the cloudy weather might display some better colors.  We are not disappointed.

We end the day in Page, where we get a room at a motel overlooking Lake Powell and Glen Canyon dam.