Summer 2009

The day started out fairly well with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the 60s. We had made reservation to take a photo tour of Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon outside of Page. We have been told that it is best to be at the canyon when the sun is shining because the beams of sunlight entering the canyon highlight the shapes and color variations. The sunshine that we were seeing was good for us... and then our luck changed. We had to be at the tour embarkation point at 10am, but by 9am the clouds started drifting in until we had a thin overcast and filtered sunlight. We went anyway and while the colors may not have been as brilliant as described by friends and seen in a number of publications, it was still a good photographic experience.

As I stated, ours was a photo tour and was longer than the other tours operated by the tour company. The problem is that there are many tours and the result is rush hour in the narrow confines of Antelope Canyon. Our group contained 12 people and we had to make way for the other groups while we were attempting to take our pictures. Our guide held off groups and moved us around so that we interacted less with the other groups. This made the experience a bit better. Susie and I shot over 350 pictures. It is difficult to cull that many pictures into a quantity that we could post in the limited time we have before we have to post them on this page. The pictures below are the ones we felt were the best.

This evening we went for a walk down to the beach. The walk is nearly three quarters of a mile from our site. It is almost all downhill, which means you have to walk back uphill. For all that work, the beach may be called that because it is adjacent to water. However, if you wanted to play on a white sand beach, you would be disappointed. To me it felt like solid rock with a little bit of sand at the water line. In fairness, you have to recognize that the beach was probably under 50 feet of water before the the multi-year draught that has caused the water level to drop.

In an effort to get the last two days of pictures and comments uploaded, we went to the Wahweap Lodge to see if we would have better luck connecting to the server. After several attempts, we were unsuccessful. I asked the desk clerk if there was "any magic trick" required to get this to work and she didn't know. She did say there have been problems with the Internet for some time and "it has something to do with thunderstorms." I asked her if there was anyone I could talk to that could give me a technical answer as to why connection is erratic and was told that no one was around. It looks more likely that we won't be uploading anything until at least Thursday evening.

Before we boarded the vehicles for the ride to Antelope Canyon we were entertained by a Navajo Hoop Dance. He started with one hoop and finished up with 31.