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< PHOTOGRAPH PARTICULARS <

Four wheel drive is essential in the deep soft sand of the wash leading up to the entrance to Upper Antelope Canyon. It is important to maintain speed in soft sand which our Navajo guide and driver, did with a flourish and zeal.

Our Navajo guide drove the tour pickup truck like a demolition race driver, but played the native flute in the slot canyon, like a prince. The three Japanese photographers, who completed the “client” group, with Ed and me - were fun, polite, and dedicated to their photography.

Upper Antelope slot canyon is a short canyon. It seemed little over 100 yards long to me, but the tour pamphlets list it as longer. I’m glad I went. The lighting in Upper Antelope was far too challenging for my photography skills and stubborn refusal to use a tripod. A sturdy full size tripod is pretty much a requirement to get “good” photographs in this canyon.

I’m not a “tour group” guy (I’m the antithesis), so I much preferred my 2008 experience with Lower Antelope slot canyon. It was prettier, better lighting, you could drive to it yourself, no guide required, and no time limit on how much time you spent in the slot canyon.

So, I offer up a few snapshots, taken hand held with a point and shoot Canon for my memories, and to give any thinking of doing the same tour, some glimpse of the experience.

< ACTIVITIES DAY NINE OF TWELVE <

Making one motel reservation after another and staying one night allowed us to cover a lot of territory. We stayed in Motel 6s whenever possible. It is easy to make reservations and if plans change, they have a generous and easy to achieve cancellation policy.

That said it was a real treat when we made reservations for two nights in a row. We did this at Moab and we did this at Page. You get a lot more quality use out of your rooms this way and it nice to break up the constant long distance travel each day, even if you are seeing lots of cool stuff.

So when we left our motel rooms Tuesday morning, we left most of our stuff at the motel and took only what we needed for the “Wave lottery” and the Upper Antelope slot canyon tour, with us in the Jeep.

There were some nice photo ops driving to the Paria River Rangers’ station that morning. The sky was clear and the morning sun is always great hitting the sandstone cliffs and mesas. We were not successful in winning a spot for Wednesday morning to hike the Wave. Only ten people get the walk in permit by lottery and there were 52 of us there hoping to get one. We shrugged off the attempt and headed for the tour guide headquarters for our Upper Antelope tour.

By the time we had finished the Upper Antelope tour I was disappointed and considered it the least desirable stop of the entire road trip, along with the Zuni Pueblo visit. But time puts things in perspective. Now I’m glad I went. The Martres photo guidebook I had along with me, warned that taking good photos in Upper Antelope was a “challenge” and I knew I would be using either my Canon G9 or G10 and stubbornly refuse to use a tripod, though I took a small metal tripod with me.

When the company switched us from the promised ride in the Suburban to the back of a bouncy exhaust fume filled pickup truck I was irritated, but not too much. The ride up the wash was kind of fun, despite the fumes. Then when we got inside Upper Antelope, Ed and the three Japanese clients with their expensive and cameras and tripods accepted that I was along for the hike and didn’t let it bother them at all that I was going to try to take photos with an advanced point and shoot rather than a DSLR with correct lens, and sturdy tripod.

Our guide however asked to see my camera when we were a short ways into Upper Antelope and before I knew what he was doing he started changing all the settings on my camera saying “too many automatic settings”. Well I kept my cool but it really made me mad. I asked him to return my camera and to return ALL the settings he had changed back to those I had on “my” camera, before he started making all the changes.

From then on all got better. The guide accepted me as an old stubborn, (probably stupid), hiker and snapshot artist, instead of a serious photographer. All of us got along famously and I was really pleased to see Ed in his element with some serious photography challenges and opportunities. The three Japanese were first class all the way, letting me take my turn at photo ops and always smiling and enjoying the canyon photo ops experience.

By the time our time was up in Upper Antelope Canyon we were all happy. Our guide played his flute inside the slot canyon and did a great job of it. The flute playing “fit” and added to the experience.

Out of the photos I took in Upper Antelope Canyon more than half of them were badly blurred, no matter how steady I thought I was holding my camera with the slow shutter speed required of the reduced and contrasting light. BUT the photos that did come out are memory makers for me. It will remind m

< PHOTOGRAPH PARTICULARS <

Cairns, metal arrows, and pebble lined sandstone make an interesting and easy to follow loop trail from the inscription panel and waterhole, up across the mesa top. A portion of the loop was closed do to ice conditions while we were there but we were still able to hike almost the entire loop by backtracking.


Rain and snow melt feed a small waterhole at the base of a cliff. For thousands of years it was the only reliable water for over 30 miles in any directions. The cliffs served as a landmark making the waterhole easy to locate. The original waterhole has been enlarged a bit over time by those who depended upon it, but it is still dwarfed by the towering cliffs that shade it and keep it from evaporating in the summer heat.

The waterhole is along the natural route between the Acoma and Zuni Pueblos. Anasazi built masonry dwellings and kivas on top the El Morro sandstone mesa and added their petroglyphs to the rock faces of the cliffs near the waterhole. These cliff faces would record the passing of many interesting, famous, and widely varied travelers.

The oldest “non-Native American” inscription was left by Don Juan de Onate in 1605. Lots of the Spanish conquistadores left their message here and “paso por aqui” or “pasamos por aqui” (I or we passed by way of here in Spanish), is a common message carved in the cliffs. Ramon Garcia Jurado carved a message on the cliffs in 1709 just 30 years after the Pueblo Revolt, where the Pueblo people united and drove the Spaniards out of their homeland (temporarily).

Among the Native American bighorn sheep petroglyphs and Spanish “paso por aqui” messages a poet left a poem in 1629 cut in stone. Then came Americans and the U.S. Army. Lt. J.H. Simpson left a crisp inscription here in 1849. Then the somewhat bizarre: in 1859 the U.S. Army experimented with the use of camels for desert travel in the American Southwest.

The camels were bought in Egypt; trained in Texas; and led by Lt. Edward Beale (He was originally in the U.S. Navy!) with a fellow named Breckenridge, in charge of the camels. They stopped by at El Morro twice, both in 1857 and in 1859 when they carved their names in the cliffs.

By the time the civil war began, the U.S. Army gave up the idea of camels and most were sold or turned loose. There are many strange stories of those travelers who ran across “wild camels” in the Southwest in subsequent years, many of whom must have given up whatever brand of whisky they may have been drinking at the time.

The stories with a link to El Morro, go on and on, and make interesting reading. A visit to El Morro brings many of the stories much more to life. It was a good stop and excellent hike. Ice had closed a portion of the loop trail, so Ed and I hiked to the end of the trail and the back tracked up to the top of the mesa to hike the other portion.

< ACTIVITIES DAY SEVEN OF TWELVE <

This would be an interesting day of travel on this road trip but not a particularly good day for photographs. In fact, there is only one photograph that I took the entire day that I’m proud of. The rest do little more than share a story of road trip travels and preserve good memories.

After a now customary big breakfast at Denny’s, we left Grants, New Mexico for El Morro National Monument. El Morro had perhaps the most interesting history of any place we visited on this road trip. There are few “knock out” photos to be had here but hiking along the inscriptions panel on the face of the cliffs; the water pool that “made” the place; or up across the top of the cliffs where there are kivas and masonry ruins and views for hundreds of miles - - certainly made this a great place to stop and visit.

Leaving El Morro, we drove to the Zuni Pueblo. I got my favorite photograph of the day of a young Zuni girl clutching her precious puppy, she said she had named “angel”. Zuni Pueblo though, is one of two places we visited on this road trip that I would not highly recommend. The pueblo itself is so run down it is a bit depressing, even though all the Zuni people we met were friendly, helpful, and wonderful people.

The women working the official Zuni crafts outlet store will never make a living working on sales commission but in their own unhurried way, they went about life. I bought a jet bear fetish here with an inlaid turquoise rain cloud. A card came with it telling of the Zuni craftsman, who created it. It is something I will long treasure, though a return trip to Zuni Pueblo will never be high on my list. The church at Zuni Pueblo, like most else there is in bad need of some care.

One of the many guide books I had with me said that highway 13 coming in from the Northeast of Canyon de Chelly was scenic, so Ed and I plotted a route to Chinle, Arizona that would take us north up highway 491 from Gallup, New Mexico, then over the mountains on highway 13 to the north edge of Canyon de Chelly (Canyon del Muerto is the north canyon).

The weather was windy an