Antelope Canyon,and Lake Powell a Top 10 Adventure!

Our main reason for coming to the Page area was to visit the infamous Antelope Canyon. After reviewing the reviews and information from both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons we chose to tour the lower through Dixie Ellis' Tours. From everything we read the tours are in vastly different types of slot canyons and we were prepared to be wowed!

What we weren’t prepared for was being wowed even before got to the canyon. We were told by several RV friends that the Lone Rock camping area was one of their favorites and within minutes of arriving it quickly made it to our top 10 as well!

We were told there was camping right on the beach or a little higher up where the views are just as spectacular. We were warned that if we did dare to take the rig down to the beach area make sure we stayed on the hard packed area or you will find yourself shelling out hundreds of dollars in towing fees. After arriving and seeing how cool the beach camping looked there was no question where we were headed!

We parked the rig up top and scouted the area with the jeep picking our spot and the best route to get there. Our friends were right, stray a few feet off the hard pack and you would be axle deep before you knew it.

We arrived on a Tuesday and enjoyed the afternoon on the beach. The dogs ran and swam for hours loving the freestyle beach life. With rain forecasted the next two days we scheduled our canyon tour for Friday morning.

We were delighted when the sun greeted us the next morning and the rain held off for most of the day. We took advantage of it by breaking out the kayak and spending a few hours on the water. Like many reservoirs, the water was crystal clear and the shorelines were dotted with hidden inlets and canals. Having recently purchased Filmora (video editing software) I took this opportunity to create a 4 minute video of me inflating our kayak and some of our time on the water.  

First stop was Lone Rock....

 Then on to some of the hidden inlets......

View back towards our rig

You can paddle in and around many of the boulders

The waves create weird formations

We also got out to see Horseshoe Bend a famous bend in the Colorado. It is a 1½ mile round trip hike to the rim. There was a steady stream of people as several Asian tour buses were in the parking lot....

Even with these crowds it was definitely worth seeing. No guard rails whatsoever. We were surprised to hear that the last death here was March 2010 when a Greek man fell 600' to the floor.

The rain did come however and with it, the wind. The ensuing sand storm reduced visibility to about ¼ mile. I am guessing the winds were in excess of 40mph rocking the rig relentlessly. We put the dish down and spent the afternoon reading books and watching movies off the DVR.

The next morning we were up early and ready for our tour of Lower Antelope Canyon! The tour itself is $25/person plus $8/person Navajo fee (plus $10 guide tip). We had chosen the 10:30am tour as everything I read said the lighting would be the best this time of morning. They ask you to arrive ½ hour early for check in. Page is located in Arizona which does not recognize daylight savings and we were camping in Utah so there was an hour difference in a matter of 10 miles. We arrived at the tour location promptly at 10am and were told we missed our tour and they follow Utah time! What?!?!? Luckily they had a couple slots for the next tour and we were good to go.

Between Dixie’s and Ken’s they schedule tours every 10 minutes. The tours have anywhere from 30-45 people in each tour…..so you can imagine the number of people. As we approached the entrance to the canyon you could see people lined up waiting to get in.

Approaching the covered entrance

We waited about 30 minutes to climb down the first set of stairs into the slot.

The stairs leading down into the canyon

Once we got in we found ourselves in a large room with more than 100 people standing around taking pictures.  This was going to be a long 1½ hours!

Yikes!

At that point our guide (Savannah) went around to each member of our tour group (14 people) and asked if they needed any help with their cameras. This was one of my biggest concerns going into this tour, what camera settings to use. I went on line and found a lot of information on how to set your camera for the Upper Canyon Photography Tours where you can use tripods where exposures of over 6 seconds are not uncommon. Not possible in the Lower Canyon tours where tripods are not allowed.

She set both our cameras to the same settings; P (Program mode) ISO 400, white balance to “Cloudy” and E/V value to -3.  I will say, what initially looks like chaos toured out to be a quiet and peaceful tour.  Once we left that initial room and started our tour we usually only saw the other 12 people in our tour and at times we lost them and were all by ourselves.

The contours lines and coloring of the sandstone were incredible! It first section had walls 60’-80’, about 1/3^rd of the way through we climbed some stairs and the walls were 20’- 40’. We took hundreds of pictures between the two of us. It was difficult to choose which pictures to include. I apologize in advance but this is as few as we could narrow it down to……

See how narrow it gets?

Including some people adds a little perspective

She called this shot The Rocky Mountain Sunset

The guide called this one the Maidens Head

The exit is a VERY narrow passageway out of a crack in the rocks onto the surface.....very cool.

This area around Page and Lake Powell has a lot to offer…. Hiking, boating, the tours and ATV’ing. There were trails leaving right from our camping area and Barb went for a ride into the surrounding hills to take some pictures of our camping area from above.

Our rig is the dark speck right in the middle

View the other direction

The beach camping was great, we arrived on a Tuesday and left on Saturday. Friday night the beach got really crowded. I imagine in the summer it is a zoo! Be warned, do not get into the soft sand! There were a couple of rigs that got stuck while we were there that had to be towed out.