Page, Arizona – Slot Canyons

Our next stop was Page, Arizona.  There are lots of things to do in Page.  First let’s talk about slot canyons.

My first adventure was to an area known as Antelope Canyon.  The area is located on Navajo Nation land and is known by the Navajo as “The place where water runs through rocks,”.  Better know to most as slot canyons.

Slot canyons are tiny canyons formed when water finds its way into a crack in the bedrock. A slot canyon is the result of thousands of years of weather extremes. Turbulent flash floods that wore away the sandstone rock face, followed by hot, dry periods where sandstorms buffed the canyon walls to a striated, swirled finish.  When you think of a canyon, you think about looking down into a large bowl like feature.  With a slot canyon, there is literally just a slot on the top and you have to go into the canyon and look up to see the beauty.

Antelope Canyon is the most-photographed slot canyon in the American Southwest as well as the most visited. The Canyon’s most popular two sections are known as Upper Antelope Canyon and Lower Antelope Canyon. In these slot canyons, you can see the gorgeous light beams and breathtaking colors produced by the two slot canyon sections that make Antelope Canyon so famous, 

Deer Canyon

Within the Antelope Canyon, there are other sections that you can visit that tend to be less crowded but just as beautiful.  My first experience was in one of the less crowded sections known as Deer Canyon. On the Deer Canyon Tour, I was lucky enough to be the only person on the tour, so it was just me and the guide hiking through the Deer Canyon section.  It was amazing.

This is what a slot canyon looks like from the top.

Here we are walking down to the canyon floor, then at the entrance of the canyon.

Here are pictures from inside of the canyon.

You can see in the pictures some steps and ladders in the canyon to get you back to ground level, because what goes down, must come up!

Lower Antelope Canyon

I also had a chance to visit the more famous Lower Antelope canyon. On this tour there were 16 guests plus more groups ahead and behind us.  A much different experience, but the sights were just beautiful.

Here is just some of the beauty you can see in the canyon.

When you use your imagination, sometimes you can see things in the rocks. For example, this picture looks like a woman with her hair blowing in the wind.

Sometimes it is not the rocks, but the sky that presents an image. Do you see the seahorse in this picture? How about the seal?

This is a picture of what the Navajo Indian guides like to call ‘Rocky Mountain Sunset’ (full disclosure, the guide took this picture).

Here is what Lower Antelope looks like from the top at the exit of the canyon. You can see some people emerging in one of the pictures.

These canyons are absolutely breathtaking.  Because of the way the sunlight shines in at different times of the day, the views are ever changing. 

Like I said at the the beginning there is a lot to see in Page, so stay tuned for more of Page in the next post.