30/04/10

We slept at a Wal-Mart in Page last night and this time we were by no means alone. I counted 9 RVs in the car park, seems a popular place to go. I’m sure the local RV park doesn’t really like it too much. We also had another 25 hour day yesterday! This time it was because Arizona does not do daylight savings, so we are now on the same time as the pacific coast.

This morning we got up to go see the Slot Canyon. It was pretty expensive to go and see as it is on Navajo land and they seem to like to make as much money as possible from that. You have to pay to enter their land, then you have to pay to do the tour, I was pretty dubious of if it would be worth it, but it was. We took a 4x4 drive along a dry riverbed in the desert to the entrance to the canyon and spent the next hour and a half walking through taking photos. It is a photographer’s dream, the light is amazing and the rock is eroded is fantastic intricate shapes. Check out the photos for an idea of what it’s like. The rocks seemed to glow like they were on fire, an analogy that was helped by the flame-like shapes of the eroded sandstone. In the end I took 65 photos of the place and ran out of battery on my camera. Still won’t capture it all.

After a quick 4x4 trip back to civilisation we decided to grab a couple of caches. We got one for Arizona at a great point overlooking Lake Powell. We were very lucky with it as we had tried in the morning and there were builders right at GZ but they were on lunch when we returned. We drove across an amazing bridge by the hydroelectric dam which made the lake to go into Utah. To get this cache we had to wander a little way into the desert, not something we do caching at home :)

Post caching we left the Page area and headed to the Grand Canyon. Yup, pretty grand. At the first viewpoint I grabbed a pressed penny and a penny collector’s book to keep my collection in. I am now officially a collector of those pennies :D. We are now in the camp site right by the canyon in the national park. The first thing we did upon arrival to the campsite was have a shower. It has been a long time coming and it is so nice to be clean again. We then went over to the canyon for sunset. Spectacular. The dying sun made the peaks in the canyon glow a golden orange contrasting the shadows of the deep gorges, another thing that makes a great photo, but still is better seeing it for real.

We cooked for the first time since getting the car too; a gourmet dinner of baked beans and bagels. Good stuff. It is probably bed time now though, and a cold night it is likely to be. I am currently sitting at the dining table in the van in jeans, shirt, microfleece, hoody, KON ski hat, thick socks, shoes and I’m still cold. The thermometer says 8 degrees, sounds about right.

Cube out