Antelope Canyon & Glen Dam (Miles to Date: 24400)
Today was an early rise as we had a tour planned of Antelope Canyon. Mark had long wanted to visit this strange geological feature, a cork-screw canyon – and had organised our route to pass through here. This valley is only accessible by taking a tour, so we drive into Page to the meeting point of Antelope Canyon Tours. We climbed into the back of a covered 4 wheel drive truck with our fellow passengers, a couple from France – a nice man who spoke great English and his wife who was Spanish and spoke little English. We are joined by our driver; Robert "Earth Boy", a Native American of sorts – we never did discover from what nation he derived (we assumed Navajo). He had been doing the job for a month having just moved down from Montana. Initially he was a bit taciturn, but once he got going he spoke at a thousand knots with a drawling accent, making it hard to follow for our French companions – so Karen had to translate into English for them. The ride to the canyon is a mere 20 minutes but that was long enough for our truck to develop a problem and have to have a replacement sent out. The vehicle that turned up was a closed truck – not as exciting as our fallen chariot, but with 
more comfortable seats. Onwards we go onto the Navajo reservation – here we turn off road and head down a wash, replete with signs about the dangers of flash floods. Luckily today the sky is clear as we head off road over the pitted wash floor, carved by the continuous traffic of tour vehicles. 10 bone-shaking minutes later we reach our destination, Antelope Canyon. This is a truly amazing place, it is essentially a slot canyon, the definition of which is a canyon where you can touch the walls with out stretched arms. In this case the walls have been carved into convoluted angles, so it appears to be shaped like a corkscrew. The sandstone has many shades of yellows and oranges which have been worn smooth. The canyon would be nothing except for it extends upwards over 100 feet where it is in parts open to the sky letting shafts of light down into parts of the canyon spectacularly illuminating the walls and floor. It is truly a magical place – even when filled with people. The canyon is only ¼ mile long be we linger for nearly an hour marvelling at this magnificent creation of nature.
When our tour is over it is only 11:30 and our next destination is only about 2 hours drive away so we decided to go back to Glen Dam, which is also a National Monument, and take a tour of the dam. Started in 1956 the dam was dedicated in 1966, it stands 710 feet high (just a few short feet shorter than Hoover Dam) is 25 feet wide up at the top and 310 feet wide at the bottom.
Electricity from the dam supplies some 650,000 people in Arizona and provides irrigation water to the States of California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Before the tour started Jack and Emily started working on their Park Junior Ranger book. All National Parks and Monuments have these books which young people – or adults if they wish – answer questions about the Park they are visiting and in exchange they get sworn in as a Junior Park Ranger and are given a badge – we have quite a few of these now!! Jack and Emily talk to the young lady Ranger on duty and enthuse about their collection of rocks and fossils. Before we get too far with this we are called to join the tour. Our tour guide takes us down from the Visitor Centre 110 feet down to the top of the dam – where our guide takes us out across the top of the dam and gives us oodles of information about the history and operation of the Glen Canyon Dam. After a half hour the tour is over and we return to the Visitors Centre. Jack and 
Emily went back to the Ranger station to Junior Ranger activity, where the young lady Ranger introduces us to a fascinating young man, David Rankin (www.rankinstudio.com). This was David’s first day as a Ranger here, but he is very knowledgeable about palaeontology. At the age of 14 David and his friend had discovered a Plesiosaur (a genus of huge marine reptiles) skeleton, from the late cretaceous period when this area was under a sea. Later in 2001 David found bones from a previously undiscovered plesiosaur which was later named after him - Eopolycotylus rankini. Strangely enough we had read about this story before in a new paper article in a restaurant – little did we know we’d meet the real man. Of course Jack and Emily were excited by this – especially Jack who you could imagine following in David’s footsteps. The other Rangers on duty made poor David do the Junior Ranger pledge with Jack and Emily – but he did well. Before we left he told us of the Land Management Bureau station in Big Water, Utah some 12 miles north that specialises in palaeontology – so off we set. This place turned out to be a gold mine of information on the region and its significance in the palaeontological world. The area, generally known as the Grand Staircase -Escalante is a National Monument and due to structures of the geology and the weathering of the rock formations, is rich in well preserved dinosaur remains. After watching a very informative film on the work being done on excavating fossils, we picked up some great materials for Jack and Emily’s school work and set off back to our motor home.
One of the things one should know about motor homes is that you either need to bring along with you on your trip a mechanic, electrician, plumber and carpenter or you need to develop the all-road handyman skills. The reason we mention this is that we have been plagued with several problems of late – on this occasion we had a problem with our towing system we use to drag the Jeep around behind the motor home. After about 45 minutes of cussing -and pointless physical abuse on inanimate object - Mark applies some finesse to the fine adjustments on the tow bar and we are ready to leave for our next stop near Kayenta, Arizona some 150 miles south-west of Page.
Today was an early rise as we had a tour planned of Antelope Canyon. Mark had long wanted to visit this strange geological feature, a cork-screw canyon – and had organised our route to pass through here. This valley is only accessible by taking a tour, so we drive into Page to the meeting point of Antelope Canyon Tours. We climbed into the back of a covered 4 wheel drive truck with our fellow passengers, a couple from France – a nice man who spoke great English and his wife who was Spanish and spoke little English. We are joined by our driver; Robert "Earth Boy", a Native American of sorts – we never did discover from what nation he derived (we assumed Navajo). He had been doing the job for a month having just moved down from Montana. Initially he was a bit taciturn, but once he got going he spoke at a thousand knots with a drawling accent, making it hard to follow for our French companions – so Karen had to translate into English for them. The ride to the canyon is a mere 20 minutes but that was long enough for our truck to develop a problem and have to have a replacement sent out. The vehicle that turned up was a closed truck – not as exciting as our fallen chariot, but with 
more comfortable seats. Onwards we go onto the Navajo reservation – here we turn off road and head down a wash, replete with signs about the dangers of flash floods. Luckily today the sky is clear as we head off road over the pitted wash floor, carved by the continuous traffic of tour vehicles. 10 bone-shaking minutes later we reach our destination, Antelope Canyon. This is a truly amazing place, it is essentially a slot canyon, the definition of which is a canyon where you can touch the walls with out stretched arms. In this case the walls have been carved into convoluted angles, so it appears to be shaped like a corkscrew. The sandstone has many shades of yellows and oranges which have been worn smooth. The canyon would be nothing except for it extends upwards over 100 feet where it is in parts open to the sky letting shafts of light down into parts of the canyon spectacularly illuminating the walls and floor. It is truly a magical place – even when filled with people. The canyon is only ¼ mile long be we linger for nearly an hour marvelling at this magnificent creation of nature.When our tour is over it is only 11:30 and our next destination is only about 2 hours drive away so we decided to go back to Glen Dam, which is also a National Monument, and take a tour of the dam. Started in 1956 the dam was dedicated in 1966, it stands 710 feet high (just a few short feet shorter than Hoover Dam) is 25 feet wide up at the top and 310 feet wide at the bottom.
Electricity from the dam supplies some 650,000 people in Arizona and provides irrigation water to the States of California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Before the tour started Jack and Emily started working on their Park Junior Ranger book. All National Parks and Monuments have these books which young people – or adults if they wish – answer questions about the Park they are visiting and in exchange they get sworn in as a Junior Park Ranger and are given a badge – we have quite a few of these now!! Jack and Emily talk to the young lady Ranger on duty and enthuse about their collection of rocks and fossils. Before we get too far with this we are called to join the tour. Our tour guide takes us down from the Visitor Centre 110 feet down to the top of the dam – where our guide takes us out across the top of the dam and gives us oodles of information about the history and operation of the Glen Canyon Dam. After a half hour the tour is over and we return to the Visitors Centre. Jack and 
Emily went back to the Ranger station to Junior Ranger activity, where the young lady Ranger introduces us to a fascinating young man, David Rankin (www.rankinstudio.com). This was David’s first day as a Ranger here, but he is very knowledgeable about palaeontology. At the age of 14 David and his friend had discovered a Plesiosaur (a genus of huge marine reptiles) skeleton, from the late cretaceous period when this area was under a sea. Later in 2001 David found bones from a previously undiscovered plesiosaur which was later named after him - Eopolycotylus rankini. Strangely enough we had read about this story before in a new paper article in a restaurant – little did we know we’d meet the real man. Of course Jack and Emily were excited by this – especially Jack who you could imagine following in David’s footsteps. The other Rangers on duty made poor David do the Junior Ranger pledge with Jack and Emily – but he did well. Before we left he told us of the Land Management Bureau station in Big Water, Utah some 12 miles north that specialises in palaeontology – so off we set. This place turned out to be a gold mine of information on the region and its significance in the palaeontological world. The area, generally known as the Grand Staircase -Escalante is a National Monument and due to structures of the geology and the weathering of the rock formations, is rich in well preserved dinosaur remains. After watching a very informative film on the work being done on excavating fossils, we picked up some great materials for Jack and Emily’s school work and set off back to our motor home.One of the things one should know about motor homes is that you either need to bring along with you on your trip a mechanic, electrician, plumber and carpenter or you need to develop the all-road handyman skills. The reason we mention this is that we have been plagued with several problems of late – on this occasion we had a problem with our towing system we use to drag the Jeep around behind the motor home. After about 45 minutes of cussing -and pointless physical abuse on inanimate object - Mark applies some finesse to the fine adjustments on the tow bar and we are ready to leave for our next stop near Kayenta, Arizona some 150 miles south-west of Page.
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