Welcome to Day 2 of the Alpine SoCal Lake Powell Rally 🙂

Warning! – Picture heavy post again today… consider viewing on a laptop or desktop computer since mobile devices often have trouble downloading the pictures.  Hint: If an image doesn’t load, try refreshing your screen.

We started off our day (Thursday) with a fine Alpine breakfast…

courtesy of our wagon-master(s) David & Nicole Guhsé.  Here’s David boiling up some eggs to add to the already huge spread consisting of yogurts, fruits, muffins, croissants, etc.,

Nicole put the finishing touches on the spread…

and Lorraine Foster helped prep the tables.

And then the hordes attacked 🙂

Some folks (below) took advantage of the limited time after breakfast to detail their Coach before our first scheduled activity of the day.

Our agenda for the day (below) has us meeting at the Slot Canyon Office for a tour of Antelope Slot Canyon (←click link to see more).

Everyone piled into their cars for the ~10 mile drive over to the Slot Canyon Office in downtown Page for our 10 AM tour.

We got an extra treat while waiting for our tour to start with an Indian hoop dancer:

After the entertainment, we all piled into the modified pickups for an exciting drive to the canyon…

It took three of these pickups to transport our large group of Alpiners.

We drove through a long semi-dry wash to get to the entrance.

These rigs must go through a lot of springs and shock absorbers to keep them running smoothly over the rough terrain.

When we arrived at the entrance to the canyon, we all piled out of the pickups… no worse for wear and tear…

and walked to the mouth of the canyon where our driver then took over duties as tour-guide.  Each group of ~12 people had their own driver / tour-guide.

We entered the canyon…

and everyone said ooh and aah numerous times…

Antelope Canyon was formed by erosion of Navajo Sandstone, primarily due to flash flooding and secondarily due to other sub-aerial processes. Rainwater, especially during monsoon season, runs into the extensive basin above the slot canyon sections, picking up speed and sand as it rushes into the narrow passageways. Over time the passageways eroded away, making the corridors deeper and smoothing hard edges in such a way as to form characteristic ‘flowing’ shapes in the rock.  Click HERE to learn more about this place from my friend, Wikipedia®

Our tour-guide / driver turned out to be quite an expert on taking photos in the canyon.  It didn’t seem to matter if it was an iPhone, Android, or expensive digital camera… she would take your picture-taking device and change the settings for the best picture.  She even took many of the cameras or phones from people and took the pictures herself.

It’s hard to do this awe-inspiring place justice with pictures.  Everyone took lots of photos (us included), here’s a sampling:

If anyone would like to see more pictures of the awesome place, simply send me a message and I can email the full-size originals.

Our tour-guide gathered us all together for a couple great pictures inside the canyon:

We exited the canyon at the opposite end and took a short break in the sunshine while one of the Indians played a flute.

We backtracked through the canyon to the entrance and squeezed past the many tourists that had come in behind us.  Our nice guide made sure she didn’t lose any of us on the tour and saw us back into our seats for a return trip back to the office.

Many of the Alpiners then made the short drive over to Big John’s Texas Barbecue for lunch:

The rest of the day was basically ‘free time’ with no scheduled activities until we all gathered again at our campground for “Social Hour”.  We had some leftover pizza and garlic bread from yesterdays dinner along with assorted snacks that folks brought over.

We closed out another fine rally day with good conversation.  We also welcomed new members; Frank Krauland and Reginald & Karen Bodeux.  It’s always good to get new members and important for the future health of the association in order to remain strong and viable.

I hope you enjoyed today’s tour… stay tuned for more adventure on Day 3 of our SoCal Alpine Coach – Lake Powell Rally 🙂