The friendly people at Dixie Ellis’s Lower Antelope Canyon tours gave me a “make good” this morning. I was in the first group to descend into the canyon and it turned out I got the same tour guide as we had yesterday. The Canyon is on Navajo land and the tour operation is run by members of the tribe. They are friendly, helpful and pay attention to detail. Julie (my tour guide) told me the main reason she accompanies us into the canyon is to keep us safe and to keep tourists from doing something stupid, like writing their name on the walls.
There are stairs and ladders you must walk down in order to get into the canyon. Some are like regular stairs. Some are more like a ladder. As long as you pay attention it isn’t difficult. Once you get to the bottom you are in a long canyon carved by water and changed by tectonics over time. Light gets in through the slots above (hence it is called a slot canyon) and that, combined with the red rock makes for a pretty walk.
As you look through the pictures you might remember one of them as a screen saver for the Windows operating system. Also, a scene for the next Star Wars movie was filmed in part of the canyon. There was a wedding in there today as well. It calls to people.
I entered the canyon about 8:15 and was out of it by about 9:30. When I went in the temperature was 85 degrees. By the time I came out it was 95 and an hour later, when we left Page for Bryce it was 105.
Our cabin in Bryce is about 100 meters from the canyon. I am looking forward to a night sky without light polution to do some star shooting.
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