Wahweap / Lake Powell

We arrive at Lake Powell, a man-made lake in the middle of the desert. Karen goes into the registration office to get our space and her usual, thorough briefing of the area.  The Navajo ladies behind the counter don’t seem to smile much. Later, a woman walks in and says, ‘you don’t look so happy’ to the women working. That didn’t go over well. Karen wonders if this is a cultural thing.

It is so hot, but the view from our campsite is stunning.

Karen drops into the office to book some tours because our phone doesn’t work.  We find out that the reason is because AT&T doesn’t have coverage in the Navajo Nation. Interesting.

We book tours after realising we’ve made yet another time zone mistake as Arizona does not observe daylight savings time.  We’re packed and ready to go an hour early.  At least we figured it out before leaving the campground park. 

We are all a bit grumpy because we haven’t had a swim to wash off the travel’s heat and instead drive out past the Navajo coal burning plant and get on our tour of Upper Antelope Canyon, as you cannot go without a Navajo guide. We pile into the open-air back of a pickup truck to bounce and bump over the sandy track for 20 minutes.  There were other international couples that seemed to enjoy Georgia’s company.  Our Native guide took us through the cool, stunningly lit slot canyon pointing out the different shapes and showing us how to take pictures of them.  Georgia took her flip-flops off and ran barefoot through the cool sandy canyon. She whispered to the other tour-takers “c’mon everybody, c’mon! “

It was an amazing thing to see, a cool relief from the deserts scorching sun and everybody loved Georgia’s antics.

The next day we took a boat tour of Lake Powell to see Lower Antelope Canyon. It was a totally different experience. Although beautiful, it was expensive, long, hot and Georgia spent most of the morning having a meltdown on the boat. Fun.

That afternoon we hiked down to the lakeshore and took a long swim in the lake. Thank heavens for G’s love of water.