Navajo Nation – Wed 24 & Thu 25

After leaving Bryce Canyon we backtracked back into Arizona and headed towards the little town of Page, where we planned to do a tour of Antelope Canyon. We were a bit sceptical about tours since we haven’t had much luck with them, but Antelope Canyon is now only accessible as part of a tour so we didn’t have much choice. We chose the Photography tour rather than the standard tour, and it is obviously just made for people like me! The tour guide (who was a native Navajo) was a photographer himself, and so our small group went back and forth around the canyon on his advice depending on where the best lighting was at particular moments and where the best photos were! He also could stop the other big tour groups while our group took over the different caverns to take photos (because there were literally hundreds of people in what is not actually a very big slot canyon), so unlike the people on the standard tour our photos weren’t filled with dozens of other tourists. We didn’t actually learn much about the canyon, but we got some great photos!! :-)

A few miles up the road from the canyon is Horseshoe Bend, a really unique part of the Colorado River where it does a 180 degree turn. You look down at it from the cliffs above, it’s a pretty awesome sight. Of course I had left my wide angle lens in the car though, and given the steep ¾ mile walk through hot red sand to get to the lookout I wasn’t about to go back and get it, so the panorama stitching software had to come into play instead!

From there we headed on to Monument Valley. We almost didn’t make it there... We pulled over for a photo stop along the side of the road, and Justin turned the car off for a minute. About an hour later he was able to start it again! He thought he knew what the problem was after our saga in Las Vegas, but unfortunately that didn’t seem to fix it. So it was back to the drawing boards, and he played around for ages before it finally started again – although he is still not totally sure what actually made the difference! So we are hoping it isn’t going to become a regular occurrence... Thankfully this time it was slightly cooler than the last breakdown – although still more than warm enough!

We camped inside the Navajo Tribal Park at the little campground there, which has a great view of The Mittens (a couple of stone formations that look like a left and right mitten/glove). Sunset at the Mittens was pretty nice.

We got up for sunrise the next morning, and after having turned down a $70 per person tour we bumped our van along the dirt road through the Tribal Park, which goes past most of the rock formations. After the initial sunrise the sun wasn’t really doing its thing (ie making the rocks glow red) since it was pretty overcast, so we were very glad we hadn’t forked out for the tour! The Monument Valley formations really are pretty awesome, but (something we haven’t had to say for a while!) the weather didn’t really do them justice this time. Oh well, we can’t complain since the last couple of weeks have been great weather!

More photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/canadianmport/AntelopeCanyon?authkey=Gv1sRgCMDUv5Wb3fScZg#