I made sure we brought water and actually drank it because my friend is not good at remembering to drink water. The walk there was not too hard, battling the sun shining on you was the difficult part.

There was a 20 minute walk to the lookout point with two shade shelters along the way. It was eaten on the way over to our afternoon stop, Horseshoe Bend in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Lunch was included on the tour – a turkey sandwich, a banana and small bag of chips. Quinton gave us some tips of how best to take photos and we went camera crazy! The combination of sandstone curves and beams of light created some amazing pictures. The Canyon was everything and more than I imagined! Everywhere you looked it was different and beautiful. You get a real sense of being in the desert and the enormity of it. We started the tour by hopping onto the back of a seated truck and drove 10 minutes to the entrance. Our tour guide from Antelope Canyon Navajo Tours, Quinton, was really awesome and gave us a lot of information on the Upper Antelope Canyon. Two-thirds of the bus got off for the lower and we stayed on for the upper. There are two sections to the Antelope Canyon, the lower and upper.

It is considered spiritual and sacred to Navajo culture and way of life. The Antelope Canyon can only be accessed via a Navajo guided tour as they are located on the Navajo Nation Reservation (near Page, AZ). The drive to Antelope Canyon weaved in and out between states: Arizona, Nevada and Utah – making my phone go crazy because of different time zones. There was one pit stop for bathroom and to get snacks/coffee at a gas station/convenient store called The Border Stop. Our guide was Wayne, with Patrick as main driver, and they were awesome! Both were very professional and organized – we were assigned seats on the bus and given a granola bar and water for breakfast. The tour company was National Park Express. The pick up time was 6:25am from our hotel, Bally’s, by shuttle and got dropped off at Treasure Island to meet with the rest of the tour group on the coach bus. We had chosen to upgrade our Horseshoe Bend/Glen Canyon tour to include the Upper Antelope Canyon (an extra $65 USD pp/~$89 CAD pp – the exchange rate was not in our favour). My friend and I had booked our tour through the Las Vegas Pass a couple days prior to arriving. On my Las Vegas trip, I was able to cross off Antelope Canyon from my bucket list and it was surreal.

Horseshoe bend bus tour