we have taken "picture taking" to an entire new level.. by now we have both so much its almost becoming a frustration! this morning we woke up in page, arizona, where we went to see the antelope canyon (as suggested by our friend from san diego). unprepared tourists as we are, we just drove somewhere (we are pretty sure we went to the upper canyon; there is also a lower canyon, wikipedia tells me), and discovered you cannot "just" goto the canyon; you can only go by guided tours. ours turned out to be 31 dollars per person, but that would be cheaper than the tour in the afternoon they told us. that one would be 46 dollars! (because the lighting was better at that time). we were loaded unto a truck, and were driven to the canyon through the navajo desert (luckily the ride was not too long, as it was very bumpy, driving with high speed through the sand). it was really amazing to see, and almost impossible to photograph, but everyone tried their best, just clicking, and clicking and clicking away..... i tried with my fisheye lens, without it it was even harder, and above you see the result.... but... being there was so much more impressive than the photo shows. these canyons are formed by water flowing through navajo sandstone, due to erosion you get the amazing shapes and curves in the rocks...
if you look at google for images, you will see a lot of fancy ones from professional photographers, with light beams from openings above. wikipedia just told me that those beams are only visible in summer, when the sun is high up in the sky (so i guess tours are even more expensive then, apparently they range from 30-80 dollars per person! we got a cheap one). the family you see above had brought a tripod, and at every spot they put it down, and jumped all in front of it, like clockwork, hahaahaha.
another set of kids decided to carve their names in the rocks when we got out. it was quickly discovered by one of the tourguides and they had to remove it (dont know how well that worked). i was surprised their parents were not that angry. but even more so that the kids apparently thought this was a normal thing to do.... (moreover, it was posted at the parking lot, and the tourguide had mentioned it, but they had missed both these announcements as their mom upon reading the guidelines later on said; oh, i guess we should have read those rules before you started carving, kids!)
we saw more beautiful things today, but now its time to sleep in yet another nice motel. this time in kanab, utah, just across the state line with arizona.
