Day 12: Morning at Lower Antelope Canyon

When I tried to make reservations to visit Lower Antelope Canyon several weeks before our visit, I saw that tours were offered every thirty minutes from 6 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., and no slots were available on the day I'd hoped we could go. There was a time available on the next day at 8 a.m., though, so I took it.

Lower Antelope Canyon is on Navajo land and is not part of the National Park system or the Arizona state park system. The only way to visit the tour is with a tour guide. "Ken's Tours" was recommended. They only accept cash and require a confirmation via phone or online the day before the trip. The Ken's Tours website says the departure point does not have a physical address that some GPS systems recognize, so they give you map coordinates.

We didn't have cell phone access while we were in the Grand Canyon, so I waited until we got to our our hotel in Page before I called to confirm our reservations. Unfortunately, by the time we got set up in our hotel room in Page, Ken's Tours had already shut down for the day, so all I could do was leave a phone message. The website says you have to confirm 24-48 hours in advance, so I was worried that they would not hold our reservation--especially since we hadn't paid for it. Our reservation called for us to be there thirty minutes before our scheduled 8 a.m. departure time, and I was skeptical that someone would be there answering the phones before 7 a.m., so it seemed like a real possibility that we would pack up and leave the hotel by 7:15, only to be put on a waiting list once we got to the Canyon. The only upside was that tickets were going to cost us a total of $180, and we would at least not lose a deposit.

Just before we went to bed, I explored the website a little further and attempted to confirm our reservation that way. It seemed to work, but I remained skeptical.

Ken's Tours is adjacent to a coal-burning power plant built in 1975 that features three enormous, 775 ft (71-story) concrete smokestacks that are "listed among the tallest structures in Arizaona," according to my good friends at Wikipedia. My friends also report that "the utility operators of the power station voted to close the facility when the lease expires in 2019." It is not an attractive desert feature.

Just before we reached the powerplant, we turned on to the unpaved road that leads to Ken's Tours and saw a large parking lot, crowded with cars and charter buses. A Russian man standing in the line at the ticket-purchasing window did not have a reservation, and he was told that he could get on a waiting list and hope to fill a missing spot on a tour, but he could end up waiting hours.

Fortunately, our reservation was secure.

At 8 a.m., we joined a group of 15 or so led by a Navajo man in his early 20s and walked a short distance with several other similarly sized groups across unremarkable desert terrain to a staircase and a ladder.

Part of what makes Lower Antelope Canyon so remarkable is that it is so close to such ugliness--the power plant, the parking lot, the hot, rocky surface of the desert. You can't see anything of the "canyon" until you're in it.

One of Pablo's favorite parts of this tour was that we were walking beside a couple of twenty-something Star Wars fans from Los Angeles who were eager to claim him as one of their tribe.

I would put Lower Antelope Canyon on a tier just below Sequoia National Park on a list of my all-time favorite natural wonders.