Although we have taking a couple of driving vacations over the last couple of years we haven't really had a long eventful vacations since before Covid. This past week we headed out to Arizona and New Mexico to see an annular eclipse and tour some of the geological features out that way. I'll talk more about the eclipse in another post but wanted to share some of the other things we saw along the way.
Our trip started out with a flight to Phoenix. The flight was fine but I forgot how painful it can be to get through baggage check, security and the general chaos associated with flying. Once we got to Phoenix we drove north towards Lake Powell. The goal was to hike through Antelope Canyon. It is probably one of the most photographed canyons in the world. It is slot canyon meaning it is just a crack in the rock. Over time the occasional rushing water has carved out some really unique circular patterns on the walls. This mixed with the different colors of the rocks and sun beams coming in from the top makes this a sort of a magical place.
Antelope Canyon is part of the Navajo land and anybody that wants to visit it has to go through a company that hires Navajo guides to take you through it. This canyon used to be one of the places they would come and meditate and talk to their animal spirits. I can easily see why this is a spiritual place and would have loved to spend hours just sitting on the floor and admiring the beauty of the canyon BUT this place has become so popular that there is a constant stream of people walking through it.
I have to say though that our Navajo guide Cindy did a good job of giving our group of nine people some undisturbed time in each of the rooms in the canyon so we could get some good pictures and just gaze and look at all the strange formations in the canyon. She also seem to really know how to get the best pictures of the canyon whether you were using your phone or a real camera. She managed to take a good photo of me in the canyon as shown at the top of this post.
After Antelope Canyon we took a quick trip to Horseshoe bend which is on the northern end of the Colorado river. It was a bit of a challenge to get full picture of Horseshoe bend without getting too close to the edge of the canyon but I managed to take a series of shots and create a good panarama.
From there is we drove towards Monument Valley and unfortunately got there just after the gates closed for the day. The problem was that Arizona does not use daylight savings time and Utah does and even through some Monument Valley is in Arizona the entrance is just over the border in Utah. It didn't really matter as we had seen Monument Valley on another trip and were only stopping because it was on our way to Albuquerque. I did manage to get a few shots just outside the entrance.
The next stop on our trip was Albuquerque. This is where we are planning on view the eclipse as Albuquerque has on average 310 days of sunshine a year. When we planned the trip I had a hard time finding a hotel in Albuquerque which is strange since it is a pretty big city and there weren't enough eclipse nerds to fill the city. It turned out it was also the time of the biggest balloon festival in the world. We have never been to a balloon festival so since we were in the area we decided to check it out.
We attended the afternoon/night session. It seems each day has a theme for the two weeks of the festival. The theme for the day we attended was shaped balloon. At night the have what they call a Glowdeo where they inflate and then light up them up which ended up being way cooler than expected. This festival has over 500 balloon teams attending and there had to be 100+ shaped balloon. It was a sensory overload in the best way. We were so close to the balloons where we sat that we actually had to move when they blew one up because it was hitting our chairs
It was a really well organized event. It took about 30 minutes to blow up all the balloons so the field when from empty to filled with shaped balloons really quick and soon we were totally surrounded.
When it got dark and they lite them up it which was insanely cool.
It was much better than we expected and I'm glad we got a chance to see it. After the Glowdeo there was a drone show where a few hundred drones took to the air with LED lights and formed all kind of cool patterns.
There was also sky divers flying through the night air lighting fireworks off as they came down and then a final fireworks show to cap the night off. Although we had never been to a balloon festival, now that I see what they are I would definitely do it again.
The next day on our way to the eclipse viewing site we actually saw the morning ascension of the balloons. It was really great seeing that many balloons up in the air at once.
After the eclipse we took a couple of days to make it to Sedona and spent a couple of days taking in the many red rock formations and scenic drives in the area.
We had been to Sedona over 20 years ago and were surprised how much the town itself has changed. The scenery is still spectacular but there is a lot more hotels, restaurants and houses than there use to be. It was a good way to end the trip. I'm not sure when we will be out this way again but it was fun to see some scenery that is so different from what we have here in New Jersey.
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