The trip from Las Vegas to Monument Valley followed the route south of the Grand Canyon, with stops at the South Rim and Sedona. The return would be on roads to the north of the Canyon stopping at Page, Arizona for a visit to Antelope Canyon, then west to St. George, Utah and back to Sin City. The drive from MV to Page is less than two hours, so we booked a tour of the Upper Canyon for 12:30 when the light would be best. Hopefully, the sun would be shining and its rays penetrating the “roof” of the canyon, illuminating the interior and making for superior photographs. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
Page is a pleasant enough city of 7247 people nestled near the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. We opted for a Best Western hotel there overlooking what’s left of the lake and did a little shopping to kill time before heading out to Antelope Canyon. Siobhan bought Bill a very nice silver and copper bracelet, the better to ward off arthritis, and since the Symphony was not in town, we found a barbecue joint with live music for dinner later on that night.
Our tour outfit had the cumbersome title of Adventurous Antelope Canyon Photo Tours and was administered by a feisty Navajo lady named Carol Bigthumb. I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am not messing with anybody named Bigthumb, lady or not. The posh offices of AACPT were located on Highway 98. They told us to look for Blue Mile Marker 302 and that’s important. There are tour companies at the upper and lower canyons operating from different locations, each with its very own mile marker. Ours was the only one with a designated Photo Tour. It was also the most expensive, but had the shortest lines. As in Monument Valley, the entire tour trade was operated by Navajos.
Whether you know it or not, almost all of you have seen photographs taken of the gently curving sandstone walls of Upper Antelope Canyon. As with Monument Valley, this place is unique and impossible to replicate. The guides on the Photo Tour are all camera-savvy and since the tour groups are moderate in size, the guides will have time to attend to everyone, answer your questions, show you the best angles and even take some pictures of and for you. Our girl, Marla, was experienced, sharp and helpful. Which is more than we can say for our truck driver, who was almost surely a lost Navajo daughter of Evel Knievel.
Just in case you were wondering….
A plucky Dennis laughs off the rough trip.
The Antelope Experience
You will arrive at least one-half hour early for your tour and you will park exactly where Carol Bigthumb assigns you, otherwise Carol may have you staked out naked over a series of anthills in a paean to the good old days. Good news, though! While you wait, you will get to watch one or another of the band of Navajo Hoop Dancers available for pre-tour entertainment. After that, everyone is lined up and divided into groups of 12-14 and herded into a truck strangely remindful of an army vehicle with seats along the sides. Seat belts are available but the Indians assure you they will not be needed. This is a lie, as we discovered when bouncing almost to the ceiling while travelling at breakneck speeds over extremely bumpy roads on the way to the Canyon, about a ten-minute trip. Think airplane flight when the plane suddenly sinks in rough air and all beltless customers go flying. Nobody died but we had a young pregnant woman in the truck and an old fellow named Dennis who was in the rocky midst of chemotherapy. Everybody laughed it off but it was the type laughing movie audiences do when the monster in little Jimmy’s room is about to come out of the closet.
Upper Antelope Canyon was carved into the Arizona sandstone near Page over the course of countless milennia and is one of the most breathtaking destination spots in the country. Over thousands of years, wind and water scoured a narrow crevice in a mesa to eventually form this slot canyon. Upper Antelope measures only a quarter mile long and 130 feet deep, but every inch of it is remarkable and has long been favored by photographers and movie producers. Midday, when the sun is high, is the best time for shooting and the summer months provide superior angles for the shafts of sunshine to enter. Before May and after September, the results are not as spectacular. Tourists are not permitted to carry backpacks or other encumbering nuisances as the canyon sometimes gets extremely narrow. There are often in excess of 100 people inside due to the number of different tour companies and everyone enters and exits at the same place. The various guides often hold traffic so the clients can shoot their pictures. The pace, however, is not hurried. The Upper Canyon is often crowded but everyone manages and what may sound like a harried experience is nothing of the sort. Everyone exits with a smile. Well, almost everyone.
Then again, there is Siobhan, the old scold, and her new accomplice, Mary, wife of Dennis, who advise Marla that measures must be taken on the return trip to keep cancer patients and pregnant women from bouncing through the roof. This earns Dennis, Mary, Siobhan and I seats in the back of the cab while the pregnant girl is happy with assurances of a slower ride back. Everyone hums Glen Campbell’s Gentle On My Mind as we crawl back to the depot where Carol Bigthumb waits to collect any bad reports.
Marla pronounces The Word for a rapt Siobhan, Mary and Dennis.
The Lower Canyon
While the upper canyon is almost always very busy, Lower Antelope Canyon, serviced by just one tour company, draws far fewer customers. While the tours are still guided, if a photographer shows up here with a tripod he will often receive a four-hour pass and be left to his own devices. The Lower Canyon is somewhat more difficult to negotiate with its uneven surfaces, occasional extreme narrowness and the need to ascend several flights of metal stairs. The stairs are an improvement over the ladders which were previously used and have helped boost attendance in the Lower, where the percentage of serious photographers to casual tourists is much higher than the Upper on most days.
All of the slot canyons in this part of the country are subject to flash flooding. As recently as 2010, several tourists were stranded for hours on a ledge in the Upper Canyon when two flash floods rampaged through the area. Several were rescued while others had to wait for the waters to recede. Rain falling several miles away can quickly funnel through Antelope Canyon with little prior notice. On August 12, 1997, eleven tourists were killed in Lower Antelope Canyon by a flash flood which washed the ladders away. Almost no rain fell at the actual canyon site that day. Today, what ladder systems remain are bolted in place and the fee booths now have NOAA Weather Radios from the National Weather Service as well as alarm horns.
Back To Las Vegas
Big John’s Texas BBQ isn’t the Four Seasons, but in Page, Arizona, do as the Pagans do. We joined half the rest of the town for dinner and country music in Big John’s large back yard. The food was good, the music was average and the barbecue smoke flooding the area was impossible, so it was an early curfew for Bill and Siobhan. Too early, perhaps. Next morning, when we opened the car trunk to insert the luggage, it was obvious varlets had arrived earlier, mussing up the one bag we’d left in the car and pilfering Siobhan’s large plane purse, used to carry the IPads, notebooks, etc., on our flights. Fortunately, the only things in the bag at the time were the newly-purchased bracelet, an appointment book, Siobhan’s truck keys and my highly valuable (and very esteemed) flip-phone.
We surmised the theft had occurred during all the hubbub at Big John’s and went back there to search the upper regions of the dumpsters, all to no avail. This was one of the very few times we’d left a bag in a car trunk overnight and it will be the last, the modern technology in thief circles being what it is. Apparently, keyless-entry cars (which all of them will soon be) are more vulnerable to sophisticated door-opening equipment than the old automobiles. Some advisories claim that hitting the “lock” button on your remote several times will take care of the problem, but who knows?
I called my phone, now in the hands of the infidels I assumed, and left a message offering a $200 reward, no questions asked, for return of the purloined goodies. Five minutes later, I got a call back. A fellow hotel guest had been out to check his boat that morning and what to his wondering eyes should appear but Siobhan’s red carry-on purse with everything intact. I was a little insulted that my phone was deemed unworthy of stealing but nonetheless happy to get it back. “See!” I told Siobhan, “and you tried to tell me my little phone was worthless. If it had been an IPhone, I’d never have seen it again.” I never saw it again anyway. When the hotel shipped our stolen goods back, the flip-phone was the only item curiously missing. Nobody knew anything about it. Now I’m stuck with one of those fancy new IPhone 6 apparatuses like the rest of you and I have to figure out what all these damn geegaws are used for. It’s a mess, but what’s a curmudgeon to do?
Marla gets a shot at the “Heart.”
The Last Night
It didn’t take me too long to figure out one thing about being newly married: people like to give you stuff. When you make restaurant reservations, they ask you whether your visit will be a special occasion and when you tell them you just got married they bring you nice things like champagne toasts and dessert dishes with “Congratulations!” written in chocolate script on the side. At least, they did at the frou-frou Aquaknox restaurant in the Palazzo hotel.
“Do you suppose,” I asked my ethical new bride, Siobhan, “that there are SOME disreputable people who ALWAYS claim it’s a special occasion?”
“Not us.” she declared, casting a leery eye.
“Mr. Killeen—GOD will see you now.”
Homeward Bound
Blessed with a rare direct flight home, we arrived in Orlando around 5:30 p.m., punched in our numbers on the Ford Lariat’s waiting door and were happy to discover our duplicate keys in the console. Another disaster averted, which makes two on one trip if you consider the Grand Canyon descent.
Another vacation over, but not without chills, spills and plenty of hills. We had pulled off an exquisite wedding ceremony, complete with a Frank Merriwell finish. We escaped from a 107-degree roasting at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and the world’s hardest mule saddles. We frolicked in the spas of Sedona, investigated the secrets of Monument Valley and bathed in the astounding light of Antelope Canyon. We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain and we’ve seen sunny days that we thought would never end. And just one more thing. With all the canyoneering, all the ups and downs, all the muleskinning, I think we’ve firmly established once and for all that we DO, indeed, know our asses from a hole in the ground.
That’s all, folks….
Except to deliver a final big Thank You to Stuart and Mary Ellison and to Austin Li for holding the fort, to Sharon for superior animal care, and to Richard Helms, Bombardier-General of the Fairfield Air Corps, for delivering the Wedding Crashers to Las Vegas. Next Summer: the Pacific Northwest. Lewis & Clark was never like this.
