Here is a gallery from a wonderful trip to Arizona over Thanksgiving 2013… We started our trip south immediately after work from Salt Lake City and journeyed all the way to Page, Arizona.
We caught a few hours of sleep at a cheap bed bug hotel with black mold in the tub, and arose before the sun to catch a sunrise from a vantage point high over Lake Powell. It was moody with the night fog banks still lingering in the valleys, and wonderful desert pastels painting the landscape as the sun bathed the sky with the first light of day.
After a big Grand Slam breakfast at the local Denny’s, we headed over to nearby Horseshoe Bend. A well known and often photographed overlook to the Colorado River as it makes a 180 degree bend around the butte. I didn’t have very high hopes for the outing, but was pleasantly surprised that the overlook was far more impressive than I had thought. We grabbed the usual straight on composition that you normally see in photos and then ventured for a short hike along the cliff side to capture some more unique compositions.
Then it was on to what I had extremely high hopes on photographing…Upper Antelope Canyon. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Lower Antelope Canyon. I had managed to secure a Photographer Pass and was able to spend 4 hours in the canyon. This trip was a whole different experience. After paying the hefty entrance fee, we were piled into the back of large 4 wheel drive vehicles by the local Navajo. And embarked on a high speed bouncy roller coaster ride through the desert to the entrance of the canyon. Here we were all piled out and ushered through the canyon at a fast pace. It was quite frustrating to try and capture images with the droves of visitors threatening to kick my tripod as they passed. I am very glad to have had the opportunity to visit the canyon, but have decided that the remote slot canyons I usually explore provide a much more intimate experience.
After Antelope Canyon we traveled the the reset of the way down to Phoenix to spend several wonderful days with SuzAnn’s parents. Her father guided us one evening out to the surrounding desert to a location known as Vulture Mine to photograph the Saguaro’s at sunset. The sunset seemed to last forever out there!
On the trip home we routed by Sedona with hopes to get a short hike in, but were disappointed to find the town was overrun by holiday tourists and could not even find a parking spot at the trailhead. So we just passed through and enjoyed the views along the way.
From there we headed for the Grand Canyon to catch the sunset from the Rim. Another hysterically disappointingly experience. When we arrived perfectly timed for the sunset, we found the entire canyon was engulfed in thick fog…couldn’t even see the Grand Canyon! SuzAnn jumped out of the car at one of the pull outs and shouted sarcastically to a lone photographer with his tripod setup in the fog…”Did we miss anything?”. We were in tears with our sides hurting from laughing at the irony of the situation. What a shame Mr. Murphy and his law were at work, but at least we got a good laugh out of it!
