My family and I just got back from a Spring Break trip to Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. We hiked, ate sandwiches, and had lots of time in the car since we visited the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, and The Grand Staircase of the Escalante all in eight days.

The absolute highlight for me was Antelope Canyon. It is located just outside Page, Arizona. You need to have a Navajo “guide” to explore the canyon which means you basically have to pay an entrance fee. I don’t mind giving the folks on the Res some money, they’ve have it tough, but if you go, don’t bother going into town and paying for a guided tour. You can drive right up to the site outside town and pay at the entrance. There are two sections, Upper Antelope and Lower Antelope. We went to Lower Antelope, it’s longer and narrower.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. We entered it through an crack in the ground and as we went along it got deeper, enveloping us in undulating walls of coral colored stone. Eroded by water, the stone echoes its curves and eddies. It was created over millenia by flash floods (11 people died during a flash flood in 1997) but the violence of that water is nowhere to be seen. It is serene and opulent, a natural cathedral in the Earth.