Out West: Part 2

It has felt like everything was against me writing this blog post. I’ve been sick going on two weeks now, nothing serious, but i’ve been so tired! Plus, we are hosting Christmas dinner this year and I’m rushing to clean and plan dinner. Right after I post this, i’m running to the store and trying to get my life together after being housebound for two weeks. Anyway, here is part two of our trip out west.

After staying the night in Joshua Tree Aces, we headed to the national park on our way out of town. We were able to drive in before they opened and made it to most of the lookouts without any other people. We didn’t have time this trip to hike most of the parks we visited, but we did take notes on which ones we would like to return to in the future. Joshua Tree was the park I was most excited to visit because of its unique landscape and the Joshua trees themselves. However, I think Joshua Tree would be best to come back and camp for a weekend. Of course, when it’s much warmer! I cannot imagine the stars we would see in these dark wide open skies.

After freezing our butt off in Joshua Tree, we started our longest drive of the trip. It took almost all day, 6 hours to be exact, but we made it to the Grand Canyon right before sunset. We stopped at the visitor center, but continued to drive since there wasn’t even a place to park. Everyone had gathered to watch the sunset and were coming in on buses. To our luck, just past the parking lot were a few parking spaces right off the road. There were no crowds and we were able to watch the sunset in peace. Where we took most of the photos below.

After leaving the Grand Canyon we had a two hour drive to our next hotel. We had a tour schedule for Antelope Canyon the next morning, so we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss it by staying in Page, AZ. Antelope Canyon is definitely worth the hype. You really do not understand the scale of the place until you are walking through it. We did a lot of research when finding a tour company to go with. Many reviews mentioned how over crowded it was and how the tour guides rush you through. We ended up doing a photography tour and were very pleased with it. There were only 5 people total on our tour and our guide was amazing. Right when we arrived, he took us to the end of the canyon so we skipped the crowds. After, he took us to a smaller canyon that didn’t have a single other person in it and let us walk around ourselves.

I actually forgot we stopped at Horseshoe Bend until I was editing photos for this blog post. This is only photos we took because everyone was giving me a heart attack there. I swear, way too many people stand WAY too close to an edge just to get an image.

Our last stop in this post was Monument Valley. We added this stop to our trip a hour before heading that way. We didn’t know if we would have time visit, so we added it at the last minute. We arrived late afternoon, so we weren’t able to take any tours but it was nice to be able to see it. I recommend arrive here in the morning, when the sun is rising on the other side. That way the sun won’t be in your face and you have more time to take one of the tours offered.