Jun 3 – Viewpoints Around Page

Hot, Damn Hot!

We normally don’t run the air conditioners at night because of the noise but I woke up at 1:30 am and it was still 28C inside the RV. I had to turn it on.

We tried to get to our first stop of the day fairly early as it was a short hike.

The Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado River is a spot where it does an almost 270 degree turn. To get to it you park just off the highway and then hike in about 1/2 mile on a very sandy hike.

Lots of people here. Everyone is trying to beat the heat.

Although it doesn’t look like it this first part was steep uphill and we were already baking.

You go across a short flat area to where they have a shady shelter, mainly for the people climbing back up from the last section.

Down we go to the edge.

I took so many shots, trying different panorama methods because my lens is not wide enough to get it all in. This is a series of three side by side portrait mode HDR shots.

This is a series of 6 landscape mode shots in a 3 wide x 2 high matrix.

You can see some of the rafts from the company that starts just below the dam. Horseshoe bend is quite close to the dam.

I even tried the app on my tablet to do really wide shots. The camera is not very good though.

I saw a condor flying underneath us but I was not fast enough to get an in focus picture of it in flight.

It landed on ledge close to the top and attracted a large audience of photographers.

Some clouds went by so I just sat on the edge, taking it all in, waiting for the sun to come back. A lot of people couldn’t handle the height.They would crawl up to the edge on hands and knees and then lie flat with just their camera over the edge. I REALLY wanted to take a picture of them but…

While I checked out the view, Jennie went off exploring the rocks back from the edge.

Here is her view back to where I was.

It was getting quite busy. A couple of busses had arrived.

One final shot, a 2 x 2 matrix with the lens as wide as it would go. I had even tried to do a series of close up shots in a 8 wide by 5 high matrix by I screwed it up and missed some parts.

Our next stop was a view just downstream from the dam. It had a nice covered area where we had lunch.

There was even a spot where Jennie could get close to the edge.

Somebody else taking in the view.

Our next view point was at the top of the hill in the distance.

The black box was a bus that thankfully pulled away just as we got there.

The high view down to the Wahweap Marina on Lake Powell.

The really wide panorama view. Go rght

Just beyond the viewpoint a lot of people had non destructively written their names.

We then headed down to the marina and resort.

And down to the beach.

The water has been up to that ridge.

It was so hot I had to wade in. The water was not that bad.

Jennie thought about it for a while.

Then we put our wet sandy feet back in our shoes and climbed back up to the car in the resort parking lot.

We stopped at one final lower down viewpoint before heading home to our air conditioning.

Tomorrow we are going to do our first really touristy thing on this trip and take a boat cruise.