The Day of Perfect Timing

Sunday morning was spent motoring back to the marina and cleaning the boat. Luckily this was smooth sailing with no incidents. We carted Joan off the boat (literally in a wheeled cart) and got her to the hospital, said our farewells, and Karlo and I headed to Antelope Canyon (aka Slot Canyon). We arrived just in the nick of time to join the noon tour and this was the last good tour of the day – when the beams of sunlight are still shining through the narrow passages inside the canyon. This place is any photographers dream come true. Too bad this photographer was completely unprepared with no tripod. Oh well. It was still one of the coolest things I ever saw.



The next stop was another photographers dream. It’s called Horse Shoe Canyon – where the Colorado river makes a complete U-turn. I recently marveled at this picture in Outside magazine and it was such a cool bonus that this spot happened to be right along our route to the Grand Canyon. The vista was about a mile hike off the road and as we were walking down we were admiring the cloud formations. What a nice picture they would make . . . You can see them approaching on the left.


Well, within 20 minutes those cool clouds were baring down and threatening in a bad way. We could hear the distant thunder rumbling and Karlo predicted that we were going to get wet. Yikes, my poor camera! We high tailed it back up that one mile hill and made it back to the car just before the clouds opened up. Couldn’t have been better timing.

Our drive to the Grand Canyon was a pretty one. The rain only lasted 20 minutes and the skies were clear at the canyon. We arrived around 5 PM and walked along the rim trail until the sun began to set. We were on the hunt for the perfect vantage point to watch the sunset. It occurred to me that in over 8 years Karlo and I have never watched a sunset together. I have to admit, it was hard to sit still in one place (on dry land) for 20 minutes waiting for the sun to set, but it was worth it. The sight of the sun setting over the canyon was beautiful.



By now it was nearly 8 PM and we hadn’t eaten dinner. We found a “Spaghetti Western” place for some Italian food. This place was a riot with all the Spaghetti Western movie posters on the wall and cowboys as waiters. It was a great ending to a great day.