30 April 2023 Lower Antelope Canyon

 We had an 11:15 tour time set up with Dixie’s Lower Antelope Canyon Tours ($55 per person plus fees) but were not sure what the time was where we are parked. So, after calling the tour operator, who is only 2 miles down the road, and talking with the NPS ranger, we found out that although we are in the Navajo Reservation, the RV Park is on Phoenix time and not Mountain Daylight Time. Can they make it any more confusing? We arrived for our tour an hour early and were able to get moved to an earlier tour group. That was very beneficial since the lighting in the canyon is better in the mid morning verses closer to noon. Our tour guide was Olando. He did a fabulous job keeping everyone together, helping everyone adjust their phone cameras for the best color and talking picture for the 10 people in the tour. When they used to do Photographer Tours he was one of the tour guides leading professional and amateur photographers and helping them with their camera settings. One cannot put into words how beautiful the canyon is. You could spend hours looking if they would let you. As it was, we were shuffled through at a reasonable rate considering how many people they funnel through the canyon in a day. We took hundreds of pictures! The lighting and variation in color and shadows was mesmerizing. Every direction you turned was a beautiful picture. Trying to pick just a few to put here is going to be hard. Leslie’s ankle held up pretty well. She was so captivated by the canyon, she didn’t notice it hurting too much. If it didn’t cost so much, we would go back again and again!

After the tour, we ran into Page to get lunch at Big John’s BBQ. It was delicious. On the way back, we drove down to the boat ramp to see how low Lake Powel was at this time since we hoped to go kayaking. We drove all the way to the bottom of the long steep boat ramp, and parked to look over the edge. The lake was a good 20 feet lower than the end of the boat ramp! There is a steep rocky trail around the side of the boat ramp down to a tiny beach at the waters edge if you wanted to drag you kayaks down and then back up. So much for our hopes of kayaking while we are here unless there is a massive flood of snow melt out of Colorado in the next week. The lake level also has caused the ferries to Rainbow Bridge NM to be canceled since they can’t get into the boat docks (up on dry land).