Wiebe's Wanderings: Page, Az

From Bryce Canyon we headed down the road a bit to northern Az. We had visited Page in April, 2015 on our way home from our first Snowbird trip and were quite taken with Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend as well as Glen Canyon Dam.

Our visit this year was a little disappointing. Horseshoe Bend used to have a small parking lot with no admission fee and a peaceful walk down to the canyons edge. Now its a national park with admission fees, large parking lot and tons of tourists. Some of them felt that the scenery wasn't enough and insisted on playing their boombox (a 70's term, I know) much too loud and I told them so. They turned it down for a few minutes but pretty soon we were once again assaulted with their favourite music.

Antelope Canyon is still a cattle call with far too many tourists to truly enjoy the experience and we discovered that it is much better viewed in April than in October. In fact the closer to the summer equinox the better as the colours are much more vibrant when the sun's path is higher in the sky. This year the colours showed up at the top of the canyon however down at the bottom we were primarily in semi darkness. I was still able to achieve some good photographs with some creative post processing, shooting at slow shutter speeds, high ISO and bracketing my exposures and then blending in my Aurora HDR software. The miracles of digital photography. In fact when I finally sat down to process my pictures I was pleasantly surprised at how steady a hand held shot I was able to achieve due to the benefits of in-camera image stabilization and the great dynamic range of the Sony A7iii. The shots below are much more colourful than what our eyes beheld and would more closely match what one would see in the summer time.

All in all a short but enjoyable visit and a must see destination if in the area.

Glen Canyon Dam holding back the Colorado river.

Colorado River just below the Dam

Accomodations available at our RV Park for those that are a bit nostalgic.

The ticket office and waiting are for the Antelope Canyon tours.
Not as busy as in April but they still herd you through.
No bags, purses, tripods or time stand around.
Lori's in the red jacket.

Our chariots await.
Soft suspensions and under inflated tires makes the trip down
the sandy wash akin to riding in a small boat in heavy waves.

This is probably a little closer to what we actually saw.
Light and colours and the top and at the bottom pretty dark.
You can barely make out the heads of the tourists at the
bottom of the photo as they walk through the canyon.

After blending 3 hand held exposures and a little magic the true beauty appears.

The sky was a beautiful blue however it was too blown out to fully recover in post.

Its pretty narrow, sometimes you have to turn sideways to get through.
A good reason for not allowing bags of any kind.

I actually turned this into black and white but then added back the
reds and yellows and added a glow effect.

Thousands of years of rushing water makes for the odd shapes
and the striations on the walls.
The rock walls are sandstone.
The floor, all soft sand, changes elevation with each flood
as sand is deposited or washed away.