Arizona Vacation - Day 5

Almost done....

Day 5

We woke up on Day five, ate breakfast, packed up camp (I was celebrating cause this was the last "pack up camp" of the trip...) then went to play in the Page/Glen Canyon area.









We started out with a tour of the lower portion of Antelope Canyon. It was INCREDIBLE!!!!! I totally loved it! It is a little pricey, but I thought it was worth it. It is a sandstone slot canyon just a few miles outside of Page, AZ. Here are some photos. (just know that our camera isn't all that great and the pictures don't even come close... For some better pictures of the canyon just do a Google search for Antelope Canyon and you will see some AMAZING photos! (they just won't have my adorable family in them...)





(a "real" photographer - or his backside at least... I just put it in here because I loved the stripes (would you call them striations???) on the walls, and this was the best shot of those...)



The upper portion of the canyon (a separate tour that we did NOT do) does not have stairs. it is just flat walking, in case you want to go but don't want stairs...)



This was Jason, our Navajo tour guide. My kids (especially Bryan) LOVED him! He played his guitar pretty much the whole time as we walked through the canyon and my kids couldn't get enough of him...







Here are two short video clips of us in the canyon. (and the kids playing "air guitar" along with Jason.) Hope they don't make you motion sick...





After Antelope Canyon, we went to go on a tour of the Glen Canyon Dam. We got there, only to find out that the next tour opening was in 2 1/2 hours. we booked our spot on that one, then went back to Lake Powell near where we had camped the night before, ate lunch, and let the kids play in the FREEZING cold water. They loved it.













this is a short clip of Aaron getting into the COLD water... crazy kid! (egged on by his crazy father!)



The kids would have happily kept playing in the water MUCH longer, but we needed to get back to our tour, so off we went again. (in hindsight, I probably should have just skipped the tour and let them play, since the tour was pretty boring for them, but I thought it was interesting.

This Dam is just MASSIVE! I don't remember all of the specifics, and I'm too lazy to look them up, but it was something like, if they took the amount of concrete that was used to build this dam, it is enough to build a 4 lane highway, 4 inches thick all the way from Phoenix to Chicago! THAT is A LOT of concrete!

For reference points, the circular building in the back is the Glen Canyon Dam visitors center. That's where you start the tour, and the bridge is the road that crosses the canyon.



picture above is canyon/river side, picture below is the "lake side"



Bryan next to a HUGE (retired) turbine


Now you can see the bridge again from even further down....



This thing was HUGE - just bolted right into the canyon walls... just incredible engineering!



After the tour of the Dam, we headed to Glendale to stay with my dear friend Mercy. More about that in my next (and final) post. (but you will probably have to wait until tomorrow, cause today is shaping up to be a really BUSY BUSY BUSY day!)