We woke up and opened the curtains to find sunshine. Maximum temperature will be around 30 degrees. You beauty ! I chose a simple continental breakfast with toast with Philadelphia cream cheese, a strawberry yoghurt, corn flakes and coffee (cant have cooked breakfast every day or we all know what happens then ?).
Only a short 1 minute drive to Chief Tsosies depot for the Upper Antelope Slot Canyon Tour. The tour goes for 90 minutes but it takes about half an hour to get there so we will spend 30 minutes inside the canyon. This adventure along with visiting Sedona were two things Kerry discovered early days when researching this holiday and neither of us had ever heard of them before.
The drive out was on a shuttle van and it was nice to see it was air conditioned (or maybe not ?). After 15 minutes we turned off road and started driving along a barren river bed. There was a resemblance of a track to drive on and we were third in line on the road as they had a convoy of nine vans all leaving the depot at the same 10.20am departure time.
about 14 passengers on each van. It was very bumpy on the track at times and lucky we had seat belts as there was a moment I thought I was on a roller coaster and I would have been thrown to the ceiling had I not had my seat belt on. We were seated in the back of the van under the Air Conditioning system and the problem was every time he did a sharp turn the water would fall from the system directly on us !
We reached the end of the river bed track and didnt realise the entry to the canyon was right here where we parked. They were super well organised and every group had to be escorted in within a few minutes of each other so it was not overcrowded. You just walked right into the canyon walls. Our driver / guide was a Navajo chap and he knew exactly where to stand and get the best pictures. It soon became obvious that Kerrys iPhone was taking way better images than my Canon SLR so I gave up. The guide soon offered to take the photos for all of us in our group changing
the settings as he went. He knew how to operating all different phone types (he later mentioned he is well known for his photography talent).
The walk through was an amazing experience and to think this was only discovered in 1931 by a Navajo lady who had some sheep went missing and discovered the canyon by chance. When we got through to the other end it was back to a wide river bed so essentially the canyon exists in the middle of a river that only flows when there is a flash flood event and it has carved out the amazing landscapes with a swirling motion as the water is trying to get downstream. As the canyon is so narrow the water pressure is intense so for safety reasons they dont operate in rain events and yesterday they actually cancelled all tours after the first early morning tour. At one point the canyon walls are over 100 feet tall. The photos were amazing so I have uploaded a few extras to share with everyone today. Please as we are enjoying these.
and drove out to Lake Powell Resort to go on our 3.5 hour Navajo Canyon Cruise. It departs inside a National Park so we had to pay $30.00 entry fee (we had considered buying the $80- annual pass as we might be visiting other NPs later in the trip). It was on a modern catamaran with two floors and only had about 50 onboard so lots of space. The boat (aka Ladybird) can reach speeds of 38 knots and seats were super comfortable.
Our captain Doug provided about Lake Powell and its history, with a fun twist at times. He has been doing this job for nearly 40 years. The Navajo Canyon runs off the Colorado River and is one of 96 outlets that form Lake Powell and were all created once the Glen Canyon Dam was constructed. The National Park have rules that prohibit stays for more than 14 days per calendar year so the really expensive houseboats are sitting in the marinas for 351 days per year (one just sold for $20M and rumour has it a golfer with initials TW owns it ?).
