21 April – Page – Monument Valley

Up again early.  This time for a tour of Antelope Slot Canyon, which is a mere 20 minutes out of Page.  This is a very popular tour, as we found out by seeing about 140 odd people at the site….just at the time slot that we were there for. Boy was it worth it.  Antelope Slot Canyon is a very narrow canyon formed by flood waters rushing through.  

There are many curved and sculptured sections that rise up to the surface allowing light to come in at various places.  The most well-known is where a shaft of light comes through at different times of the day and we were lucky to see it on our tour.  Our tour guide, Rick, showed us some great locations to take photos. 

We were also quite lucky to be the first tour through on our time slot as when we turned to come back there were the 144 or so others coming through.  All in all, this was another very scenic location.

We got back to the RV, packed up and headed on to Monument Valley.  We arrived at Kayenta (a little town about 30 minutes from Monument Valley) to look for an RV park, but none were to be found, so on to Monument Valley and over the border into Utah, where we stopped into Goulding’s village RV park.  Goulding’s was a trading post set up by Harry Goulding that then became well known for being involved in western movies due to the spectacular scenery in the area.  Monument Valley is definitely that… spectacular!  We had a quick drive around, taking photos at every place we could find.  

The sunset brought out some brilliant colours. Monument Valley scenery was used for a lot of the old western movies (with the likes of John Wayne) and some later movies, like Forrest Gump (where Forrest finished his run across America with the words…” I think I have had enough”) and the third Back To The Future (where Marty McFly flashes back in time in front of a tribe of Indians…in the Delorean…)

We finished the day with a quick BBQ, a slice of birthday pie (oh yeah…it was Steve’s birthday today…45 years young…..and feeling every year of it LOL), then a quick walk to catch a short documentary of Monument Valley (and to walk off the B/day pie J).