If you are looking for a colorful tourist destination, Antelope Canyon is the first choice; if you are looking for a colorful canyon, Antelope Canyon is the only one. Antelope Canyon is a psychedelic world of color and light. Antelope Canyon is on Route 98, about 5 miles north of Page, AZ, in the north of Arizona, near Utah. It is surrounded by Grand Canyon National Park and Zion National Park. There are many famous scenic spots, such as Zion National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell. Surrounded by so many stars and big-name scenic spots, it can stand out and attract countless tourists, which shows its extraordinary style. Antelope Canyon is generally called Antelope Canyon or Antelope Slot Canyon, and is also called Antelope Canyon. In fact, its official name is Antelope Canyon Navajo Tribal Park. This means that this place belongs to the ancestral homeland of the Navajo Indians. It is said that there used to be a herd of antelope here, and the Navajo people also used this place as a place to communicate with the gods. But for some reason, it was not redeveloped into a tourist attraction until a little girl named Pearl stumbled upon it while herding sheep in the 1950s. I don’t know if it’s because the park is too small or for other reasons, but the United States, which has always done its part, has not included this resort, which attracts countless photographers and tourists from all over the world, into the list of hundreds of national parks and national reserves. As a matter of course, this place has been preserved as a park for the local Navajo people. Except for the license fee paid to the government, all other tourism income has become a source of food and clothing for the Navajo people.
It is precisely because of our love and attention to the Antelope Canyon that this time we specially arranged two days, May 16 and 17, to watch this wonder in the world. It’s just that I didn’t do my homework well before coming here.
From the entrance of the Upper Antelope Canyon Scenic Spot to the scenic spot, you have to go through a river bed that is often flooded and cannot be repaired. This place is no different from a desert. When driving on it, yellow sand is flying, and all the tourists sitting in the convertible of the travel agency are confused. Disgraced. Get off the car and come to a red stone mountain with a narrow crack, which is the entrance of the canyon. Everyone followed the local guide and bent over and squeezed in through the cracks of the mountain wall. They couldn’t help but admire in unison, there is really something unique here. Inside is a vertical, steep, thin and dark crevice with a length of 150 meters. Most of the curved mountain walls are stepped or rotated to the top of the crevice with a height of more than 20 meters. The sun shines in from the half-opened and half-closed top gap, and the scene in front of you changes immediately. The stone wall in the gap is colorful and colorful due to the direct light or refraction: some are red like burning flames, and some are like blue. Ripples of ripples; some are like phantom mazes, and some are like space-time tunnels. In short, the rocks in front of me seem to be endowed with magical souls. With the change of light, the color and shape are constantly changing, making people feel dizzy and unpredictable. The scenery of the world. Upper Antelope Canyon is called “Tse bighanilini” in Navajo, which means rock over which water flows. This shows that the slit-shaped Antelope Canyon was formed by water flow cutting and wind erosion. According to the guide, it was not only the nearby Colorado River, but mainly the flooding that still frequents the area to this day. Due to the dryness and lack of rain here, the storm floods are often unstoppable, washing away the soil and leaving sand and gravel. After thousands of years of washing and polishing in the crevices of sandstones, such a grotesque natural miracle has been created. No wonder the stone walls in the crevices we see are mostly smooth arcs like flowing water, which is why tourists must be guided by a guide to prevent accidents caused by sudden rainstorms. In 1997, 12 tourists entered the valley privately, and as a result, they encountered a tragedy of flash floods that killed 11 people. It seems that beauty always comes with risks.
Unlike the Upper Antelope Canyon, which is a crack in the rocks on the ground, the Lower Antelope Canyon is more peculiar and precipitous. It is completely a crack cut deep below the ground. Perhaps because of this, the terrain here is more complex and changeable, dark and narrow, and sunlight is not easy to penetrate. We followed the tour guide and came to the gap on the ground that only allowed one person to enter and exit. We slowly descended the metal stairs and climbed more than 50 meters to reach the bottom of the valley. It is said that because it is more difficult to enter and it is often closed due to weather changes, there are far fewer tourists here than in the Upper Antelope Canyon. In fact, the Lower Antelope Canyon is much longer, but it is not easy to pass through. In some places, you have to bend over and sideways to pass, and in some places, tourists can’t get through at all. In fact, it is only half open now. The Navajo language of the Lower Antelope Canyon is “Hasdeztwazi”, which means an arched spiral rock, which is similar to the arc rock of the Upper Antelope Canyon, but the shape is more colorful. Once at the bottom of the valley, the Navajo tour guide kept introducing us according to the shape and angle of the rocks. This one looks like a bear, that one looks like a wolf, here is the statue of the president, and there is the angel stone. imagination. If you haven’t seen it clearly, the enthusiastic tour guide will help you take pictures until you see it clearly. I don’t know if it’s practice makes perfect, but the photos taken by the tour guides here for tourists are wonderful, even better than professional photographers. If you ask him for advice, he will also tell you the tricks not to use flash and not to shoot directly towards the sky, otherwise you will lose the special color produced by the refracted light in the valley. These are of course very reasonable, but it’s a pity that I didn’t participate in a photography group that allowed a tripod, and I still couldn’t take very satisfactory photos manually in a dimly lit environment. Since the bottom of the valley is deep from the ground, sunlight can only penetrate through the few gaps on the upper edge of the ground, but it is these magical rays of light that are refracted by the uneven rock walls in the middle to produce colorful colors in the valley. The colorful colors and the strange rocks complement each other, thus forming an ever-changing and wonderful fantasy landscape. It can be said that the beautiful scenery presented here is more colorful and stunning than that of the Upper Antelope Canyon. It was noon, and we happened to come to a sandy place surrounded by a spiral circular rock wall, which looked like a hole but not a hole. At this time, a beam of sunlight hit the bottom of the valley directly. The guide raised a handful of sand and threw it. In front of the stunned crowd, the scenery in the valley at this time was gradually saturated, more gorgeous, and more charming. We are indulging in this phantom wonder and cannot bear to leave. Antelope Canyon is worthy of being the most beautiful and splendid canyon in the world.
Before saying goodbye, the tour guide mentioned the history of the Antelope Canyon, saying that the white people came here more than a hundred years ago and started killing the Indians. Everyone listened silently. It turns out that there is such a bright red color hidden in the beautiful colors of the dazzling Antelope Canyon. It’s just that this color is often easily overlooked by people. How much color we haven’t seen in Antelope Canyon is unknown.
