Grand Canyon - Antelope Canyon   November 2016
After a wonderful and very busy summer with family and friends we crossed the border on October 21, 2016.  The weather in Mesa has been uncharacteristically warm for this time of year so we decided to take advantage of it and take a trip up to the Grand Canyon and Antelope Canyon.  These have been on our bucket list for a while so it was awesome to get to do both.  We went with Ruth and Wayne and we all headed for the Grand Canyon on November 9, 2016.

It is a little tricky getting photos of the Grand Canyon as it is  . . .   well, pretty Grand!

We only had a few hours in the Grand Canyon and on hindsight we should have stayed at least 2 nights in this area - but hey, now we can come back again.

if you look way way down you can see the Colorado river which looks like a tiny little snake .  A fellow told us it really is a raging river but we are nearly a mile away so really hard to get perspective.

this was later in the day and the dust and pollution made for some pretty shadows

After that we drove to Page, Arizona and spent the night at the Comfort Inn. We went to a cute little BBQ restaurant that even had an outdoor band. As we were kind of wimpy and chilly we ate inside. We drove through some beautiful scenery which we didn't notice as it was dark by the time we got there.  Luckily we had to back track the next day and saw it.  We had signed up for a tour of Antelope Canyon on line and our tour time was 9:20    We had a nice warm sunny morning.  If there is rain in the area tours can be cancelled as this area has totally flooded as recently as 2012.  In 1996 they used to have self guided tours and 11 people actually drowned in the canyon.  This canyon is on Navajo land so we had to pay per person to enter their land and then had to have guided tours of the canyon.

The tour was an hour and a quarter long but it felt like 15 minutes.  We had to descend down into the canyon on 5 flights of fairly steep step metal step/ladder type things. Then we walked along the canyon and we were in awe with every step.  They do offer photography tours as well and I think you get more time.   On this tour we had to keep moving and not much time to dilly dally which is my specialty.

hard to imagine that this is rock!  The water has carved out beautiful shapes in the sandstone.  there are some bumpy parts which we were told are calcuim deposits.  you can also see breaks in the layers where the earth has shifted.

The guides were really great and stopped to take pictures of all the groups.  They would also help you with your camera settings etc.  We used Ken's tour company which was suggested to us by Dennis and Gloria who had visited the canyon in October.  They did not lead us astray and we were equally impressed with our tour.

I cant begin to tell you how many times we turned a corner or looked up and were amazed at the beauty of this canyon.

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The sun makes the rock look like gold.