Day #10— Page Lake Powell Campground, Page, AZ --Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Had only about 150 miles to drive today, so left the motel in a leisurely fashion around 9 AM I think. My route took me past the entrance to Bryce Canyon NP again, and found me driving in a wide valley. A gushing stream near the road had overflowed its banks in many places. It was fun to be in a green, wet valley. 

Shortly after, I found myself in aptly named Red Canyon. An inviting paved bike trail ran the length of the canyon (about 10 miles), but my bike and I still haven’t made up. The road leisurely wound down from 7,777 feet and passed through two red rock arches . . . man-made arches. 

After Red Canyon, I turned east toward Kanab on UT-89, and took a 12-mile detour into Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. It seemed like a long drive on a narrow, up-and-down, curvy road. (Actually, there are few stretches of straight road out here.) These dunes were about half the height of the ones in Great Sand Dunes NP that I stopped at on my second day, but they were coral colored and pretty against a background of steep red cliffs and treed canyon tops
. 

Amazing to me how plants can grow just about anywhere--out of rock, through blacktop and cement, in water, on other plants and trees, and from fine sand like these. All they need is sunlight and water.

Desert Milk Vetch? Desert Pea Flower? Braya? Don't know.

I backtracked the 12 miles out and soon was at the Glen Canyon Dam. The dam is gigantic and impressive. The lake it creates, Lake Powell, is 186 miles long and straddles the border of both Utah and Arizona, with most of it in Utah. Remember that I crossed its northeastern end in Utah a couple of days ago. I must say that the lake is not as impressive as the dam. It was very low (76.16 feet below “Full Pool” according to the Information Center here, but then it took 17 years for it to fill completely after the dam was built). This year it is still waiting for the snowpack to melt. 

In the Visitor’s Center gift shop I bought The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by John Wesley Powell. What a man. The book details one-armed Powell’s trip down the Green and Colorado rivers and his trials in running the Colorado through the Grand Canyon in a wooden boat. His was a scientific expedition. He was most interested in the geology of the area and the people who lived there, and the first chapters of the book deal with the area’s geology, so maybe I don’t need to take that course after all. 

Page is only a couple of miles from the dam. On entering Page, I immediately booked myself on a 9:30 AM tour of Antelope Canyon for the following day. Ever since reading about it, and seeing photos of it in National Geographic, I have wanted to go to Antelope Canyon. That is why I am backtracking, trying to fit in all things. Antelope is a narrow and twisted slot canyon on the Navajo Reservation. Only Navajos can take people in to see it. 

With the help of the people at the Antelope Canyon tour site, I located Page Lake Powell Campground, also run by Navajos as Page sits at the edge of the large Navajo Reservation. The PLP CG could have qualified as a KOA—not really camping at all. Lots of super-sized RVs, a swimming pool, wifi and electricity at all sites—including the dozen tent sites right in the middle of this campground—laundry, store, workout room, showers, playground, etc. 

Entrance to Page lake Powell "Campground"

I had reserved this site early and it was a good thing I did because the CG was nearly filled by evening. When reserving, I had asked for a shady site, and that is what I got. All the tent sites were in concrete block, walled sandboxes in the center of the campground, each with its own water spigot, electrical outlet, picnic table, grill, and tree. My tree was the largest and shadiest of them all. 

Did I mention that it was a sandbox? Did I mention that the wind was blowing fiercely again? Another experience in putting up the tent in a gale. I got the tent up and staked, again opening the vestibules so that the air could blow through, but when I turned my back, the tent pulled up its stakes and started sneaking off. So, I borrowed a hammer from some people in a nearby RV and pounded the stakes past the sand and into solid ground. Hauled out the folding chair only to find that it was broken. Bah! 

Another night when pulling out the camp stove and cooking was made impossible by the wind and blowing sand. So, after all was situated, I called Jeff and talked to him for a bit and then drove back into town and had a medium pizza at Pizza Hut. I saved a third of it for breakfast. 

Back at the campground, I chatted in broken English/German with my neighbors, to the south, two German couples in identical rental RVs. Then chatted with the RV-ers to the north. The couple, who had loaned me the hammer, were sitting at their picnic table with another couple. They invited me to sit with them and I learned that they were from Nevada and that they had camped in the KOA in Willits, CA (my sister Sarah’s hometown and my destination) and loved it and the Skunk Train that runs from Willits to the coast. 

Most of the RV-ers are accompanied by little lap dogs, and their dogs act as ice breakers. There’s a single guy tenting to the east of me. He kept to himself but we exchanged hellos when I gave him a bag of “hot wood” that had been left at my site. Later in the evening, three young tenters from California pulled in. They appear to be rock climbers. Kept to themselves and didn’t talk to anyone. 

After I’d my fill of human contact, I showered and got ready for bed. Again the wind drove me into the car to read. This time when I got into the tent for the night, I was dumbfounded. Everything was covered with sand! My nylon sleeping bag acted like a magnet, and I could not brush the sand off it. I managed to get most off my pillow, but slept in a gritty dusty tent. I closed the vestibule on the windward side but then there was little air circulation so this camping experience saw me not freezing but roasting. I must say, these days of camping have not been sit-around-the-campfire-and-smell-the-pines pleasant. 

My sand covered sleeping bag