Photo: Lower Antelope Canyon
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Yesterday, we drove from Moab to Page Arizona in order to see the famous Antelope Canyon. It was the most expensive attraction we’ve visited at $26 a person, but the visit was the best money I’ve spent on photography in a long time.
Lower Antelope Canyon is Navajo-controlled, and you get a guide to take you down the 90 or so feet into the bottom of the Canyon. Inside, you see the most beautifully sculpted sandstone walls, like below. For hundreds of yards, it’s like this, with ever-changing light and shape. You could spend a lifetime in this canyon and not capture every aspect of its beauty.
I bought a photograph from the guide who escorted a group past us playing really fantastic, etherial guitar music. With our photographer’s passes, we were able to spend as much time as we wanted, and that we did. At the end, we talked to this guide and he had a budding interest in photography. I took a look at a print of his, and even though it was’t for sale, I told him I wanted to buy it. He said he would give it to me, clearly embarrassed, but I said no, I wanted to pay for it, and insisted. He had a clear talent and eye for it, and I wanted to encourage him any way I could.
From there, we drove straight to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was amazing, but very hazy and I don’t think much in the way of great photography is going to come out of our sunset shooting there. We bailed before the sun had finished going down, and tried to find a hotel room near the park, thinking we would return. The one hotel we found had rooms at $200 a night, and the crowds at the Canyon just didn’t make it worth the price, so we continued on to Flagstaff where we finally found a room in a Travelodge. Sarah’s still sleeping beside me, and I’ve been looking at yesterday’s photography.
Today, we’re headed to the Petrified Forest, and then onward toward Mesa Verde. Arizona has been fun, but the landscape is very desolate and I find myself longing for Utah or Colorado already. I hadn’t realized how much the mountains had imprinted upon me.
We’ll probably spend Wednesday in Mesa Verde, and then Thursday, drive on and stop in Black Hawk for some penny slots or something. Saturday, we make it home and have the weekend to rest before Sarah goes back to work on Monday.
So far, an amazing trip.
Comments
03-17-2009
Whoa, Tolbert. Stunning shot. Antelope Canyon is on my lifetime list of “places to get lost” someday. Actually, that is one of the reasons that you need a guide with some real lifetime experience in there – it is an easy place to get lost, and a real bummer to get lost in there during flash-flood season.
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