OK we made it back to Indy last night. Had some catching up to do with bills and all the mundane domestic stuff.

Tonight I get to start work on the definitive gallery of images, should be ready in a couple of days…

We tried to get back into Zion National Park yesterday but ended up driving through a blizzard at 7000 ft. Our Corolla has been a great little car, but we didn’t want to put it through that so turned around and came back to St George.

Spent the day pottering about - although I’m a bit worried about my camera. I got a lot of dust on the sensor while we were in Antelope Canyon and I tried cleaning it off, but only seem to have made it worse. I hope there’s no permanent damage.

Today we head back on the final leg of our journey.

If I’m lucky the staff at ‘The Mix’ will let me go out onto the balcony with my camera and take a picture of the strip :).

We got into St. George last night.

Unfortunately we picked the one day of the year when they are having the “Parade of Homes”, a Softball championship and at least one convention.

So we called round all the hotels in town and finally found a room…

If you take 89 south about a mile past Wal-Mart there’s a turning on the right that takes you to a small parking lot.

You need to climb the hill and hike down a little further, then make sure you stop just before the 500 foot sheer drop that takes you down to the Colorado river bending itself around a hefty peninsula of sandstone.

I think this is one of the most amazing views I have ever seen…

See that little white dot in the river below? That’s a 25 ft powerboat boat. Yes it really is that far down, and there’s no handrail…

Mind the Gap

Antelope Canyon is just outside of Page, Arizona. Since the canyon is on Navajo land you need to book a tour with one of the registered tour companies. We stayed at the Best Western hotel, and the front desk were able to set this up for us. It was $75 for two people, on the extended photographic tour.

The canyons are very dusty, so be sure to clean your camera thoroughly before the trip and be careful when changing lenses. I took a couple of dust reference photographs while I was in the cavern as well.

You have to share the trip with other tour groups, and it can get a little frustrating at times, as there is limited space. The more people that walk through the canyon, the more dust gets thrown up.

The caverns are quite dark, and so you need to take long exposures to really bring out the colors. f16/15-30sec @ ISO 200 was about right.

A lot of shots are prone to lens flare, so you might want to take a piece of card along to screen yourself from this. Shooting from the shadows will also help.

One neat trick we learned from the guide was throwing a handful of sand onto ledges to trigger a “sand waterfall” effect.

I thought that the pictures merited a separate gallery:

Click Here To Open

After driving about 400 miles and taking in the Grand Canyon along the way, we finally rolled into Page at about 8pm last night. We needed to stay for a couple of nights, as the next photography tour of Antelope Canyon isn’t until tomorrow.

We found a great place to eat breakfast, but we forgot what it was called…

But we did like Ken’s Old West for dinner, it’s a steak house just around the back of the Best Western hotel.

The Grand Canyon is big. I mean really big. You won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind bogglingly big it really is. I mean, you might think it’s a long way down the road to the coffee shop, but that’s just peanuts to the Grand Canyon…

It’s so big it’s almost impossible to photograph. This is my second visit and I still have to find a way to capture the feeling of standing on the south rim and looking at a hole many miles in diameter on film.

(Suzannah took the last picture)

We also met a ram who was a full time male model.

He showed us some of his signature looks…

Blue Steel

Le Tigre

Magnum

…and did we mention the Elk?

We got up really early yesterday morning to catch the sunrise over the strip. One of the best places to do this is the top of the Rio parking lot:

We had a long way to go, so we stopped off at the Peppermill for a bloody great big breakfast (tm).

Then after only 10 minutes cursing and shouting we got the GPS system hooked up to MapPoint and we were on our way…

The Mandalay Bay hotel added an extra tower a couple of years ago.. Called ‘THEhotel’ (sic) it adds a whole bunch more rooms and is positioned to give you the best view of the strip from the top.

This is where The Mix restaurant and lounge is situated. As you can see from the pictures the decor is pretty darned cool ™. The view is quite spectacular. A glass elevator takes you directly to the top on the outside of the building.

We had a fabulous meal, with excellent service at an acceptable price ($200-$300) considering the nature of the venue.

The Mix lounge

The Restaurant

…and the view.

If you are a photographer like me, do yourself a favour take a night off, or you’ll spend the whole night out on the balcony trying to photograph the strip. I recommend you just enjoy the ride!

Don’t know what’s up with Suzannah, she keeps disappearing in the casino for hours at a time…

…now I can’t find my wallet.