The tour company is located on Lake Powell Blvd. We were able to walk from the motel down to the company. What you notice as you walk down the street is that there are several tour companies operating along Lake Powell Blvd all going to the same place.
We arrived at the tour company an hour early so we asked the lady where to get a decent breakfast. She told us about the Ranch House Grille where the locals go for breakfast. It was within walking distance and it was very nice. Good food and nice atmosphere. We walked back afterwards where they stuffed several groups of us into the trucks seen to the left and off we went.
The tour is listed at 90 minutes long, but only 50 minutes are in the canyon itself. That leaves 40 minutes for the trip to and from the canyon. You ride in the back of these four wheel drive vehicles from the parking lot to the park entrance, and then you decent down into a wide sandy wash and drive for three miles on unpaved sand. Anything but a 4-wheel drive vehicle will get stuck here. For 15 minutes you are bouncing and sliding along that wash of sandy orange wondering when the tires will get stuck. As you are riding along you can see other smaller cracks in the sandstone along the side, some with cows.(right)
All of a sudden this wide wash comes to an end and you are facing this 100+ foot high sandstone cliff. The trucks turn around and park (notice the different companies.)
And here you see the entrance to the slot canyon. All the water from Antelope creek that fills the wash we just traveled thru comes thru this little crack in the sandstone. Flash floods still occur here. In fact, a flash flood in the lower part of Antelope Canyon killed 11 people on August 12, 1997.
As we went in our guide told us a brief history of the canyon. Until the tribe took over the area, teenagers used to hang out in the canyons. She pointed out several bullet holes in the walls. A sandstone 'hood.
If you're going here to take pictures, especially professional pictures, you have to be very patient because there are a lot of people here. You'll have to wait your turn or you'll end up with someone's head in your picture, like the one I took on the right.
These are my attempts to get artsy-fartsy pictures. There are several places where if you look up you can see driftwood or a branch stuck between the walls above you. Which means the water was that high at some point.
On the left you can see just how wide the canyon is in some places. The canyon is only a quarter-mile long so your tour will go relatively quickly. On the other side you will rest for a moment before going back and heading to the trucks. You can see Kathleen and James to the right waiting to go back into the canyon. Check out the tumbleweeds.
Once that tour is over we leave Page for a two hour drive to a place I have seen millions of times but never been to, Monument Valley. We have another tour scheduled here with Monument Valley Tours, Formerly Totem Pole Tours. That tour will lasted three hours.
Here's the problem though. The Antelope Canyon tour started at 9:30 and lasted for 90 minutes, so it ended at 11am. Our next tour was scheduled for 2pm - 3 hours later. So we should make it easy, correct? No, it isn't that simple. Arizona doesn't recognize Daylight Savings Time, so the time in California is the same in Arizona is the same during DST. HOWEVER, the Navajo territories DO. So a 2pm tour would be at 1pm Arizona time, leaving only TWO hours to get there. Worse, Google maps said the trip would be two and a half hours and I really wasn't up for speeding after the incident the day before with the Arizona State Police.
We travelled on AZ-98 to US-160. US-160 is an interesting road as it travels down a valley. It was here we called the tour and asked if we could move our tour a half hour later. The nice lady said sure.
At Kayenta (pop. 4,922) we made another left on US-163 which leads straight into Monument Valley. About ten miles north of Kayenta you get the first clue that something unusual is up ahead when you spot El Capitan aka Agathla Peak (left). This imposing 1,500 foot peak is the remains of an ancient volcano that eroded away long ago, leaving only the igneous core of hardened lava. It's different from Monument Valley, in that Monument valley is composed of sedimentary rock. Right after we enter Utah (right), we turned to head to the visitor center.
The Visitor Center is located on an bluff overlooking Monument Valley. This is the view you see when you get there (Click to open in a new window). There is also construction going on there as they are building a new hotel on the bluff called The View. Can you imagine waking up to this? The two buttes in the center looking like opposing mittens are called "the Mittens". The third is called Merrick Butte. You can see the Valley Drive, a 17 mile dirt road which starts at the visitor center and goes southeast around the valley. You would have thought they would have paved the road by now, but if they did there wouldn't be as much demand for the Native American guides. It's dusty, steep in a couple of places and rather uneven. You can drive on this road without a 4WD, but slow down. If it just rained your car will get very messy. So take one of the tours.
To the left are the Three Sisters while on the right was a spot where for two dollars you could get a picture of yourself on a horse against the backdrop of Monument Valley.
All but the loop is closed to non-Navajos, so those wanting to go behind the scenes of the tribal park must opt for a guided tour. The Anasazi, the name given to those believed to be the original inhabitants of the area, lived here for more than 1,000 years before leaving, perhaps because of drought, in the 1300s. They left behind petroglyphs (etchings) and pictographs (paintings) of humans and animals that were clearly visible on some of the sandstone walls. (left and right). These petroglyphs were located near the Eye of the Sun, which is a cave type natural arch.
Kathleen took a picture of us with our Native American guide, and on the right you can see the formation known as The Ear of the Wind. Ear of the Wind is what is known as a pothole natural arch. I've circled Kathleen and James to give you an idea of the scale. James got the bright idea to roll down the sand and was orange for the rest of the day.
The area on the left is called Big Hogan. A hogan is the traditional homes of the Navajo. When we arrived another tour was there and one of the Native American guides was singing. The reason they are laying down, besides the fact it's comfy, is that when you look up, the hole in Big Hogan becomes an eye of an eagle. On the right is Totem Pole
If you're wondering why if the sandstone is so easy to erode, why haven't the buttes disappeared as well. It's because the pinnacles are capped with an erosion-resistant layer of shale which delays the weathering of the softer layers below. The reddish hues come from iron oxide (rust), and the black streaks of desert varnish on the cliff faces, from manganese oxide.
After our tour, which was wonderful as well as bumpy, we didn't go back the way we came in. Instead, we headed out north on the 163 because there is one shot that every visitor to Monument Valley has gotten. Just past Saddleback, King on His Throne and Castle Rock, is a very classic roadside picture spot. So of course I had to get a picture or three there as well. Yes, I took this picture. I did not swipe it off Google. This is how you would see Monument Valley if you were coming in from the North. Wild. They filmed the 'Run Forest Run' part of Forest Gump here.
Twenty miles up US-163 you will start to see warning signs about a sharp right turn ahead. When you finally get to Mexican Hat, Utah, you see what the warning was about. The road takes a 90 degree right turn right after you pass over the San Juan River. Go too fast and you wind up part of a cliff. Mexican Hat, BTW, is named after a balancing rock just north of town that looks like a sombrero. I read that there is a good restaurant here. We would have stopped but we were on a schedule.
Continuing up north, we took a right in the little town of Bluff, Utah and headed easton UT-162. We passed thru Montezuma Creek, Utah, and seventeen miles later we entered Colorado (left). Nine miles on CO-41, a right turn back on US-160, and we were at the New Mexico border (right).
We arrived with maybe an hour of daylight to spare at a little place called Four Corners. This is the location where the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah intersect. It's on Navajo land, so there is an entrance fee. The place is surrounded by vendors, but they were all closed or closing up when we got there. We went to the very last place to go and ordered some Navajo Fry Bread, one with cheese and one with powered sugar. One tasted like a pizza, and the other tasted like funnel cake. No, I did not fart in four states at the same time, but I got a picture of Kathleen and James standing in the four states. Did I mention it's very windy at the site?
From there we got back on US-160 and traveled southwest across the tip of New Mexico, and strangely found ourselves back in Arizona. A left turn on US-64 in Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, and we were heading back into New Mexico. Daylight was quickly going, but as we were driving the 25 or so miles to Shiprock, New Mexico, I could see something in the distance that looked like a double for Sauron's tower of Barad-dûr in Mordor. Even more than Agathla Peak, this place was just creepy.
The peak's name was Shiprock(Navajo: Tsé Bit'a'í, "rock with wings" or "winged rock")>. It is nearly 1,800 tall, and 12 miles southwest of the town of Shiprock. It is the mentioned as the most prominent landmark in northwestern New Mexico.
We turned right and drove down US-491, formerly US-666, for another 90 or so miles and finally reached our motel in Gallup, New Mexico. A note about Gallup: The railroad track goes right thru the middle of the city, so if you are picking a motel, get a room in the back away from the tracks. Last year we woke up four times during the night from trains. This year, not once. Maybe it was exhaustion, but maybe it was because we were in the back of the motel.
And THAT was Day Three, definitely the most tour intensive day of the trip.