All photos by Michelle Bucher
I was first introduced to Antelope Canyon on Pinterest. Stunning pictures of this slot canyon kept popping up in my newsfeed, and I had to experience this place for myself. Lucky for me, it happened to be located in Arizona.
We road trip to Arizona quite often, and made sure to add this to our road trip bucket list.
Antelope Canyon is located near Page, Arizona, just east of the Grand Canyon. It's become a huge hot spot for many photographers because of the canyon's beauty, and when the light shines into the canyon from the open slots above, the canyon just glows a beautiful fire orange color.
We planned this stopover on our road trip from Zion National Park, on our way down to Phoenix. It was a well needed break from road tripping in a car for several hours. The stunning views of the slot canyon left us in awe, and wanting more of the red rock canyon scenery.
Canyon Details:
The canyon is located on private Navajo land, so you can't get into the canyon without a local guide. We actually really appreciated having a local guide with us as she was able to give us a bit of history on the canyon, details of the surrounding area, and even spent some time showing us just how to get the perfect pictures around the canyon.
I would have loved to spend all day in this canyon, but the tour is only an hour long.
To get to the slot canyon, you have to book a tour via one of the local tour companies and ride in on one of their 4x4 trucks. There's a bit of off-roading to get to the slot canyon, as there's a ton of sand leading into the canyon area. The tour costs $31/each and is worth every penny.
When you arrive in the slot canyon, you can either do the upper canyon or the lower canyon. Most tourists do the upper canyon, but if you're a professional photographer, the lower canyon caters more to your needs.
We chose the 11 a.m. tour, hoping to get some of the afternoon sun in the canyon.
Be warned, this is a very popular tourist destination, even during the off-season. We arrived at the canyon with seven or eight other trucks full of people. The local guides really have a great system to work around the large groups of tourists coming into the canyon. They make each group wait a few minutes between each other before entering the canyon. This allows each group the opportunity to move between sections of the slot canyon without a large group of people obstructing picture opportunities. Our guide was awesome at shooing away people from other groups that wandered into our viewing area, as they would have ended up in our pictures.
After an hour of exploring the canyon, and learning of the different sections of the canyon, it was a short truck ride back to town.
Road trip note: Arizona doesn't partake in daylight savings time, so know your local time. We showed up for our tour an hour before it started, as we didn't know this.
Have you been to Antelope Canyon before?
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