Our Trip Out West, Day 5: We Really Hit the Road

This was the first day of the major driving that we’d be doing for the trip. Our first stop was Page, AZ, after driving through some lovely country with scattered houses and farms. Man, that drive took me back: sage brush, the occasional juniper or Joshua tree, unexpected washes, lovely streaks of red and white sandstone in the distance. I do miss the beauty of the West in all its many forms.

I was really fascinated by that freestanding butte for some reason.

Was it a butte? They're supposed to be taller than they are wide,

but this one doesn't quite meet that. So is it a mesa? 

An actual, mesa-sized mesa?

I can’t tell you exactly what time we got to Page because we must have crossed into different time zones four or five times the whole trip. First there was the divide between Pacific and Mountain time, then apparently Arizona doesn’t have daylight savings, but the Native American reservations do. So yeah, we pretty much confused until we finally hit Colorado.

Page has a dam too, the Glenn Canyon Dam that forms Lake Powell, so we had a bit more fun with that. Then it was time to head out to the Navajo Nation to see Antelope Canyon.

Yeah, it was a bit windy that day. More on that later.

Areg had been especially excited about this, and when we booked everything back in June we’d had no choice but to book a “private” tour—which ended up being pretty awesome. Antelope Canyon was crowded with tourists (hard to avoid that, given that it’s a slot canyon), but then we got to go to nearby Rattlesnake Canyon all on our own, with only the guide. Honestly, Areg and I both preferred that canyon for its beauty, the quiet and privacy, and the way that you could walk the whole thing end to end.

Here's Antelope Canyon. 

Rattlesnake Canyon is after the next paragraph.

Can you see the heart?

This one looks a little bit like a certain "monument" 

that we'd be seeing the next day.

Our guide was young, and getting information about the canyon out of him was a bit like pulling teeth, but he definitely knew all the best spots to take photos and even knew how to help Areg adjust his cell phone for the best lighting. He did share that his people actually avoided the canyons in the past, as they were bad luck—not only because the overhangs blocked the sky, but because they’re a favorite spot for owls, which are considered unlucky. He shared that the woman who owns the land has a ceremony for all the guides at the beginning of the season to counter any bad luck. He also told us that he, along with many of the Navajo who were not working, would spend the following day of the eclipse indoors with family and friends, being careful not to sleep until the event was over (not too big an issue, since the eclipse was in the middle of the day).

Rattlesnake Canyon

Areg just looks awesome in all his pictures from this trip. 8-)

We ended up taking the long way around on our way back to Page. First, we stopped at Horseshoe Bend, one of the places that Areg had been before but I hadn’t (I don’t think—I saw a lot of awesome squiggly rivers in Utah and its area, but don’t think my family ever made it that far). The wind was picking up and it below a bunch of sand into our hair. It made picture taking hard, but I’ve had a weird soft spot for picking sand out of my hair since I lived in Singapore, since it reminds me of the best parts of a vacation.

 Horseshoe Bend

Next we took a scenic drive along the edge of Lake Powell, just to take a closer look. It’s hard to imagine that it was basically like Zion Canyon, but much longer, before the Glen Canyon Dam went in and formed the lake. As with Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, the lake was down almost 80 feet. Still, we couldn’t have picked a better time of day to visit—the storm in the distant south turned the sky spectacular red, blues, indigos, and violets, and the setting sun to the west lit up the stone cliffs across the lake.

Sunset over the cliffs across the water.

An awesome sunset with a rainbow, lightning storm, 

and incredibly rich colors.

If we’d had more time, I would have loved to spend an extra day at Lake Powell—to take a boat tour up the lake along the tops of the still-impressive once-towering cliffs, hike to see Rainbow Bridge, and visit Lower Antelope Canyon—apparently you can do that last by kayak, starting from the lake! 

For more pictures, see Areg's Facebook.