Arizona Spring Break: Day 5: Antelope Canyon & Sedona

Antelope Canyon was the highlight of Friday’s trekking. The only way to access this slot canyon is with a guided tour based out of the Navajo Reservation. They cluster people in groups of 10 and a guide leads you through the canyon, starting at the lower end, going down about 70’ and then walking up and out of a barely visible crack in the ground at the far end. It really is as amazing as the pictures. Walking through the narrow canyon, touching the walls, seeing all the sculpted formations and the way the light plays on them is spectacular. Having solitude in a space like that would be divine… but sigh, that is not the case for Antelope Canyon. Although we learned there are other (not as long) slot canyons that are less notorious and can be visited on your own.

After Antelope, we headed south towards Flagstaff, detouring to the Wupataki National Monument, which houses the remains of villages, pueblos, a sports court, and other archeological ruins from the ancestors of the Pueblo people who inhabited the area one-thousand years ago. Their buildings are impressive and apparently the climate was not as dry at that time. The most interesting feature was the “Blowhole” which exhausts a system of interconnected caverns and tunnels of 24 miles (the tunnels being created by groundwater slowly dissolving limestone). It was blowing pretty hard out when we stopped by, but apparently the force depends on the regional weather. Many of the native names for this translate to “wind’s home.”

We drove through a big storm of wind, hail and heavy rain on our way to Sedona. We were intending to find a spot in the Coconino Forest to set up a dispersed camp, but with the weather and being road tired, I ended up find a really nice hotel room for us in Oak Creek, just outside of Sedona. It might be the nicest room we’ve ever stayed in, complete with sofa and kitchen, a big gym, a nice pool and a large common area. Keeping our vacation movie tradition alive, we watched a movie filmed in Arizona, and chose the 1995 western, the Quick and the Dead.