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Quick 3 day trip through Page/Kanab/Vegas
This is my first attempt at a TR, I'm not sure it will be very informative, but hopefully somewhat entertaining, if not completely stream of consciousness rambling.
The short of it is, I did a 11 day loop through the area in the early fall but we didn't get permits to hike Coyote Buttes North (and didn't have the time to try to get walk-ins). So I decided to try the lotto every month until I got them, and then build a trip around that. It turns out, based on my experience that I'm glad we did not get them for our trip because a) it was nearly 100 degrees, and b) my friend and I, on that trip, were extremely out of shape and would have had a tough time with it. So anyway, while I was ON the trip on Oct 1, I got the email that I was selected for permits in January (the 7th), and I was psyched! But as it turned out, I had accidentally put in for 6 permits not just 2 (OOPS!) I contacted the BLM folks and they said they couldn't switch it to just 6 but that there should be plenty available on the 15th if I don't pay for the six permits by the deadline. I couldn't wrestle up that many people (and didn't know about this forum yet!) so I took the chance and released them. As it turned out, there were plenty of spaces available and I decided to grab 2 for the 25th of January and my best friend (Rob) who works in Washington DC at the Pentagon was psyched to come with.
We both flew into Vegas from the east coast (I flew from Boston, he from DC) on Sunday, Jan 23rd. My flight was delayed 2 hours getting to Vegas, which didn't start the trip off outstandingly, but what can you do! We drove up to St. George and got there shortly after 11pm. Our original plan was to wake up super early and drive to the Rim Rock Hoodoos trailhead before sunrise (I figured, we're both on east coast time so getting up early wouldn't be a problem, if we got to St. George when we planned). We decided to scrap that and just get up and on the road for 7AM.
It worked out perfectly to visit Lower Antelope. We drove straight there, got there around 10:30am. Paid the fee, got photo permits and had the place for 4 hours. There were only a handful of other folks in the canyon with us including a photography club from Michigan, who I really enjoyed talking to and sharing stories with along the trek through the canyon. I imagine most of you have been in there before. I've yet to go to Upper, but I really enjoyed this place. I hope the pictures below can do it some justice! We only spent a little over 2 hours in there, and I'd love to come back during the summer (even though it'd be much more crowded) with the possibility of the light beams)
Following Lower Antelope, we went and checked into our hotel for the night, and relaxed for a bit and grabbed some lunch.
Around 4PM we headed out to the scenic overlook so Rob could see the river and the cool view of the Glen Canyon Dam (I was there on my last trip and didn't take any photos this time). After that, we drove down the road to the Horseshoe Bend parking area and headed up to the overlook. Again, I was there in the fall. On that trip, we didn't get up early enough to catch 'pre-sunset', on our way up to the point, another photographer was heading back down and snidely remarked "you're 30 minutes late". Thanks for the tip jerkwad :roll:
Anyway, this time, we got there at a perfect time. We met one other dude there, Mike from Scottsdale, Arizona, who was set up with his tripod. It turned out, he was in town as he got permits to hike to the wave the following day, and he was solo. We got to talking, and decided to all go in together to Coyote Buttes, which turned out to be pretty cool. It didn't seem like there'd be anything cool to shoot, but as the sun was setting, the clouds (which I didn't see on most of my trip in the fall, OR when we went to CBN on Tuesday) really popped and the rocks lit up.
After shooting for a while, we packed up and walked back down to the parking area where we met a Navajo dude who was supposedly paid by the parks service to make sure that everyone had left HSB each night, since someone had supposedly jumped to his death the week before (?) He asked us for a ride back to WalMart and since we were going that way, we obliged.
We went to grab dinner at Bonkers which was recommended to us, but it was closed for the season. Instead we went to an italian place who's name I can't remember, and the food was just as forgettable (and I got a piece of plastic in my chicken marsala).... We made our plans for the following morning and then went back to the hotel to crash.
Here are a few pix from Lower Antelope and Horseshoe Bend. I'll continue the report with photos from The Wave/CBN later on tonight hopefully.
Enjoy!
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