September 17 - Drive to Kanab

First thing we did this morning was to hook up the brand new (to us) bike rack over the propane tank. A neighbour 3 trailers down from us was selling their bike rack and we bought it within an hour of them putting a sign on it. It seems to work very well and allows us to keep the back seat of the truck free for all our stuff.

The 5 hour drive to Kanab was spectacular!! It seemed that every 10 minutes the scenery was different. Since we were going through the desert, there were a number of "washes" where water has flowed but we didn't see much water until we got to the Glen Canyon Dam in Page which creates Lake Powell.

We did a short hike over a sandy area with some rocks with some wave-like formations to get some photos of the river behind the dam.

We arrived at Crazy Horse Campground around 4....the temperatures were still around 31 C but it will continue to be cool in the evenings.

September 18 - Hike to Buckskin Gulch and the Toadstools

We got up early to go line up for the lottery to see "The Wave". There were 107 people in 47 groups. It was a lottery ball format and unfortunately our ball didn't drop.

We decided to hike Buckskin Gulch. It was a beautiful trail. We followed the "wash" down to the slot canyon. There are several in Escalante Grand Staircase that are called washes, these are the areas where the water flows when there is rain. The slot canyon was not more than 4 ft wide in most cases and the canyon walls were approx. 40 ft up. They were somewhat windy and the walls gave the appearance of waves. We only hiked about 200 meters before there was an 8 ft impassable drop.

We drove back out the bumpy picturesque gravel road and headed for the Toadstools. This was a short 1.7 mile hike which did an excellent job of featuring the multiple different colors of rock in this area. As you can see from the pics, the toadstool is made up of 2 different types of rock. The lower rock ends up eroding faster than the higher rock, but once it has eroded, the higher rock now protects it from further erosion.

After dinner we enjoyed a fire which we shared with a nice young couple.

September 19 - Hike to the "New Wave" and Lower Antelope Canyon

We went back to the BLM for another shot at getting in to the Wave, this time they only drew two numbers as each group consisted of 6 people. It's supposed to rain tomorrow so maybe it's a good thing our number wasn't drawn.

We headed back to Page for a couple of adventures. First stop was right near the Glen Canyon dam, a spot recommended to us by the visitors centre as the "New" Wave. It was a relatively short hike with a bit of climbing and scrambling, but had some very cool Wave formations.

Next we went to Lower Antelope Canyon, which is on native Navajo land. We were a bit disappointed at first as, after a quite short walk, we were standing in a one hour line just to get in to the canyon. While we were waiting, our young Navajo guide was very helpful in advising us which settings to use on our cameras. Once again, our photos seemed to look quite different than what we were actually seeing, but they were so nice that we each took a couple of hundred photos. The canyon started with a climb down about 10 flights of stairs into a large "ballroom"....FULL of people. After several photos it was our turn to climb up to the slot canyon. What a special place...all kinds of shapes, waves and formations, all photographed with a new appreciation of the White Balance settings on our cameras - we used "cloudy" and "fluorescent". Thank you for a great tour of a "must see".