Following the Dream

Christian November 25th, 2009

                  The drive to Page, Az took an hour less than we had thought it would, so we decided to grab some lunch first at Subway.  There are a couple of things that you notice about Page when you arrive there.  One is that there is a large number of churches for such a small population.  Apparently, they could not get the churches to set up shop during the construction of the dam so they offered the churches free land surronding the high school.  When word of this got out, churches of all types came running to build on free land.  One of the other main things that you will notice is that you are in the middle of nowhere.  The town definitly has a good small town feel to it, but I don’t think that I could ever live that far from other civilization.  The place we were staying was located in the historic district of Page.  The historic district consists of 2 streets of old block motels that used to be occupied by the dam workers when it was being built.  Luckily, Lulu’s Motel looked like the best of the bunch.  It had a fresh coat of paint and the owners were very accomidating. Lulu herself even sat down and gave us a 20 minutes presentation of things to do in the area and see.  We were able to pull some ideas from her that we did not even hear of when researching the trip. 

               That afternoon, we decided to go to an area near Lake Powell called “The Chains” what supposedly had some good hiking.  The unfortunte thing was that the mercury was lingering around 100 and the hiking was not shaded.  We skipped the trail and blazed our own.  There were many cool rock formations that we walked around, sweating our way through the desert.  Lake Powell definitly is pretty, almost like an oasis in the desert.  For some reason, when ever I see a hill or mountain, I always want to climb to the top (even though I am afraid of heights).  One of the rock formations was a huge dome shape that was probably an easy 150 feet to the top.  I thought that if we trekked up it, we could have some amazing views, so I convinced Casey to climb up it with me, even though the glue on her shoe had melted and the rubber sole was halfway off and flapping around with each step.  The climb itself was easy, however we didn’t consider a few things when we started.  The first was somehow we had forgotten we were in a desert that was 100 degrees, the other is that we were not wearing sunblock, and finally we being smart did not have any water with us.  The views from the top were nice, however when we made it up there, we were so overheated and getting crispy that we could not even enjoy the views for long.  We knew that there was a nice air conditioned walmart in town, so after we decended, we headed straight there.  We could not even wait to get to the counter to pay for our ice cold drinks, it was too much temptation.  I had all but finished my huge powerade before getting to the register.  On the way out we got a soft pretzel and relaxed in the air for a bit before heading back to the room.  We enjoyed some more A/C back at the motel before heading out again for sunset to the famous Horseshoe Bend.

                      Horseshoe Bend is one of the most spectacular turns of the Colorado River.  It literally is shaped like a horseshoe and curves more than 180 degrees.  Many people take photos of it in the early morning, however I thought it might be interesting to get a shot at sunset.  It is only a couple of miles out side of town, with a small sign pointing to the turnoff.  Once you park, it is a walk through the desert sand up a hill and back down the other side, lasting about a 1/2 mile or so.  The walk is not that bad, but the sand gets everywhere.  The crazy part about this lookout is that you cannot see it until you are up to the edge looking 1000ft plus down.  Walking up to the edge was a bit hair raising, but very beautiful.  It was such a great view of the river and the canyon walls that it had carved out.  I set up my tripod on the very edge of the cliff, in order to fit the majority of the river in the shot.  It was pretty scary with no rails or any protection from falling to the bottom.  I took a ton of shots there as the sun was setting while Casey sat and was reading.  The one thing that I hated most was when people would walk up right behind you to get a look when you are standing on the edge of the cliff.  Even though there was plenty of room all around the cliff walls.  Once the sun started setting over the horizon, bats starting flying around.  I thought to myself “Great, all I need is one of these damn bats to fly at me while I am standing on the edge of a cliff”, so I stayed on the lookout for any kamakazi bats.  We stayed a bit after sunset to watch the colors of the sky change and then we headed back into town for some grub. 

                  We tried a place that was recommended by people on the internet called “Dam Bar and Grill”.  The atmosphere inside was really neat, taking on a theme of the dam complete with a dam wall, flashing generators, and photos of the dam being built.  The food was good, and even though we did not indulge they had cheap drinks.  After stuffing our faces, we headed back to the room to watch a dvd on the laptop and go to bed.  When we went out to the car, I told Casey that I thought the one tire was looking a bit low on air (the tire pressure light had been on for a while), we decided to put it off until the morning.
               When we woke up, I went out to the car to grab some things for our tour that we had booked to the Antelope canyon with Overland in Page.  I decided also to check the tire that looked low from last night.  One was almost completely flat and another was about halfway flat.  We asked Lulu’s husband where to get it fixed, since we had a tour to leave for in 30 minutes.  Luckily there was a tire place a half a block down the street that we still had barely enough air in the tires to drive to (it is a rental, right?).  They were super nice and said they would take care of it while we were on the tour.  Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon that is created by flash floods ripping through the sandstone.  This in turn creates very smooth, wavy rock on the inside of the canyon.  One of the coolest things about the Upper Antelope Canyon in particular is that at midday, when the sun is overhead, the sun shines through some of the holes in the roof of the canyon, creating these beams of light.  For the tour, our guide’s name was Barry. On the way to the canyon, you have to drive three miles off road in sand.  He took this time to spin some doughnuts in the pickup truck with us and six other tourists sitting in the bed of the pickup on benches.  It was pretty fun, even if it felt like we were going to flip at one point.  He had told us how he used to party in the canyons with the indians in the 70s until one of them shot one of the cows that were owned by the people that owned the land.  After that, they could not hang out there anymore and it was open to tourism years later.  Inside the canyon, it is pretty dark, with some patches of lighter areas.  It maintains a cool 65 degrees year round and has a very soft sandy floor.  As we walked in the canyon, Barry pointed out some really great photos to take, as well as told us stories about his times living in the area.  You walk till the end of the canyon and turn around and walk back out.  For us, the walk back out was the best.  This is when the light beams started to show into the canyon.  Even with the zoo of tourists, it was really pretty.  We had plenty of time in the canyon to take photos and watch the sunbeams appear.  After leaving the canyon, Barry took us on an extended tour, showing up some of the town.  It was pretty cool of him to go the extra mile, and he was awesome with helping get some good shots in the canyon, I would definetly reccommend him.  When we got back to town, we checked on the old PT Cruiser.  Sure enough, we had picked up 1 nail in two tires.  Luckily they could plug the tires and we would get reimbursed the $30 by the rental company.  The guy at the shop told us that they throw nails out each night to help business.  Obviously joking, or was he?  Since we were back pretty early, we had decided to head down to the marina to rent a kayak to go out onto the lake since a couple of people in town had reccommended it to us.

                The marina is a few miles outside of town and the people who had suggested this mini adventure to us forgot to tell us that there was a $100 deposit that was needed.  So after making our way all the way to the rental shop, we had to turn around and drive back to town for a credit card for the deposit.  We were trying to take as little as possible in order to prevent loosing anything in the lake.  We did bring the camelbak for some hydration though.  When we finally made it back to the rental shop, there was a couple behind us, so the girl said she was too busy get us set up on the kayak and that it is easy enough to undock.  The pain was that the kayak was on a floating dock and you could not step get in it from shallow water.  You had to get in it when it was at your feet level.  Casey got in first after I put it into the water.  She then grabbed a hold of the side of the dock to prevent it from flipping.  As soon as I stepped into the kayak there was no going back.  The damn thing started to flip over, spewing us into the lake with all of our stuff.  Luckily, Casey was wearing the camelbak and my sandals floated to the top.  The only casiulty was my brand new pair of sunglasses which now have a final resting place at the bottom of Lake Powell.  We obviously were amataures.  We could not get the kayak flipped over while we were in the water, so I beached myself onto the dock and flipped it back over to try again.  This time I got in first, then Casey, which seemed to work better.  The main thing that we were told to check out was were Antelope Canyon snaked into the lake.  It did not look that far on the map, so we decided to try to paddle our way there.  It was a bit shaky.  I want to say that this kayak was different from others we had used in the past.  Others we had used were a little deeper and more stable.  Maybe they were ocean kayaks??  It was a bit shaky and we stayed near the shoreline in case we flipped, since more than likely we would have to pull it to shore to flip it back over.  The paddle out was so hot, and Casey was still wearing the Camelbak.  We did not want to make any sudden movements and risk flipping, so I continued to paddle and paddle and paddle, splashing the lake water on me to cool down.  There are many outcrops that we kept thinking would be the turn that would take us into the canyon, but everytime we were faked out.  We were loosing hope, when finally we saw the sign for it and paddled back into the canyon.  I did most of the paddling, because for some reason Casey is a “special paddler” and only moves the kayak in circles.  Back into the Canyon was really nice and peaceful and even offered some shade, until a speedboat flew down it complete with a drunk women singing “Row, Row. Row Your Boat” to us while acting like a maestro and what I am guessing was her son take photos of us.  We were happy when they left the canyon and we had it to ourselves.  When we got pretty far back into the canyon, we were halfway though our rental time and it was time to turn back.  We were brave and Casey handed the camelbak to be before heading back so that I could sooth my dry cracked mouth.  The trip back seemed to last forever, luckily Casey helped out a bit more with the paddling and we were able to make it back okay.  It was not the best “excursion”, but it definitly will be a memorable one.  It started off bad by falling in, but back in the canyon was really nice when we had it to ourselves.  That night, my right shoulder was way more than the left one.  Casey reminded me that it was due to correcting her rowing in circles.  We laughed about the whole ordeal over some authentic Mexican food and margaritas and then headed to bed to get ready for the trip to Bryce Canyon in the morning.

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