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Page Arizona

I've been going to Consimworld Expo, a large wargaming convention held in Tempe Arizona, almost every year since 2010. I always go by car so I can take my games with me. That means a long drive. I usually go through Utah and Northern Arizona, which takes me through through the small town of Page Arizona. It's near Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. It was founded in 1957 to house workers and their families during the construction of the dam. It's quite remote - it's over fifty miles to any other significant town. Sandy and I spent a few days there many years ago going to golf school at Lake Powell National Golf Course. It was probably the best golf class I've ever taken. We really liked the course too - very scenic but still low key. Every year when I drive through Page I resolve to myself that Sandy and I should visit again. This year when we started to think about a trip for her spring break, we finally decided to make it happen.

The plan we came up with was that we would spend a few days in Page, then head up to Escalante in central Utah for a couple of days. It's another place that I had been to once and really wanted to go back to again. Finally, at the end of the trip, we would stop and see our friends Ivan and Norma who live in Ogden. Some hiking. Some golf. Some visiting with friends. It seemed like a good trip so we arranged for a dogsitter for Abby and made our hotel reservations.

It's an eleven hour drive from Boise to Page. We left home about 8 am on Sunday, figuring that would get us there in time for dinner. Since we switched to Daylight Savings Time that morning, we even got a time change advantage. Arizona is on Mountain Time, but doesn't have Daylight Savings Time. During winter the time is the same as in Boise but in the summer it is an hour behind. It was even more complicated because Utah, which is only a few miles from Page, and the Navaho Nation, which is in Arizona and surrounds Page on three sides, are all on Daylight Savings Time.

We had weird weather driving down, sometimes going from sunshine to heavy rain showers then back to sunshine in just a few minutes. There weren't any major problems though. Even driving through the Salt Lake City megalopolis traffic was fairly light. We made it to Page about 6:30 pm and got checked into our hotel. It was a new Country Inn & Suites, which I had stayed at the summer before when I was driving down to Consimworld. Because it's a long drive, the last few years Page has become my default overnight stop to break up the trip on the way down.

Years ago all of the town, and all of the motels, were up on a plateau about a mile from Glen Canyon. The highway and two golf courses, Lake Powell Golf Course and a small muni course, were were all that was down below along the highway. That's changed over the years. The municipal golf course is gone and the highway is lined by about a dozen new motels, a WalMart and lots of fast food restaurants. I'm not sure what the attraction is but obviously a LOT of people stay overnight in Page. It can't all be old guys who are on their way to wargame conventions.

After checking into our hotel, we headed out to dinner. For our first night, we went to Stromboli's. It's a pizza/Italian restaurant that is my standard place to eat when I stop overnight in Page. It's not a big place but when I've been there it usually isn't busy. Not this time though. When we got there at 7 pm we got the last table. By 7:30 there was a line of people waiting to get in. I know spring break is a big thing in Florida but I didn't expect it to cause it to be crowded in Page.

We stayed in Page for three full days. The first day, Monday, looked cloudy, maybe with showers in the morning, clearing in the afternoon. Tuesday looked to be nice and sunny - definitely our best day. Wednesday would be rain off and on. Given the forecast, we decided that Tuesday would be when we did one of the famous slot canyons near Page. Monday morning we would knock around until the afternoon and play golf when it had (hopefully) cleared. Wednesday we would wait and see what the weather would allow.

Since it was spitting a little Monday morning, our first stop was the Visitor Center at Glen Canyon Dam. It was a good thing because it turned out that it would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday (our only other days in Page), which I thought was pretty weird. We were lucky to get there while they were open so that we could get our Glen Canyon National Recreation Area tshirts in the gift shop. I was also looking for a copy of Edward Abbey's classic book "The Monkey Wrench Gang". I read it when it first came out back in the late seventies and decided this trip would be a good time to reread it. I had it on my Kindle, but when I told Sandy about it she wanted to read it too. I thought for sure they would have it at the gift shop at the Visitor Center, but I was wrong. Maybe a book about trying to blow up Glen Canyon Dam was a touchy subject. Later that morning we found it at a gift shop in town so both of us were able to read it during the trip.

After the two gift shops it had stopped raining and was starting to clear. We drove ten minutes south of town to find where we needed to go for our slot canyon hike the next day. Then we stopped at the parking area for the short hike to Horseshoe Bend. Just off the highway, there is a huge parking lot. The city of Page charges ten dollars to park there. As many times as I have gone past, I never stopped there. It was time to fix that now. We paid our ten bucks, parked, and joined the tourist hordes for the short three quarter of a mile hike to the overlook.

The name Horseshoe Bend is quite descriptive. The Colorado River circles 270 degrees around a prominent rock buttress. The view from the rim is spectacular. I got some good pictures, the main challenge being keeping the hundreds (yes hundreds) of people at the viewpoint out of the shot. The city of Page was obviously doing a good business charging people for parking. Some people walk a short distance to the north and scramble up a slight rise in the canyon rim but we didn't bother.

After our short hike we drove to the golf course. The sun was out, the clouds had mostly disappeared, and we were ready to golf. Nine holes with a cart was only $20 each - a heck of a deal. Although they let us go right onto the course, there was a dad with his son ahead of us on the first hole. It looked bad as the kid was whiffing three or four times for every time that he hit the ball. The first hole was really slow. Fortunately at the second hole they let us play through and after that we hardly saw anyone the entire time we played.

The course is really pretty. To the east the edge of the course is marked by fifty foot sandstone cliffs. To the north Lake Powell and the rock formations around it are visible in the distance. Looking to the west, ten miles away are the Vermillion Cliffs. A spectacular setting. We felt pretty good as we played too. We were both hitting the ball well even though it was our first time out this year. We hadn't even been to the driving range.

We finished our round in the middle of the afternoon. Since we hadn't eaten anything but a light breakfast at the hotel, we were ready for linner (our combination of lunch and dinner). First we went to the Grand Canyon Distillery, which we had noticed the night before. It was right across the street from Stromboli's. But when we got there, they told us that they were out of food. There had been big crowds over the weekend and said that they were completely wiped out. Unfortunately, their delivery truck only came once a week, so we were out of luck.

For our next try we went to the Dam Bar (named for the Glen Canyon Dam). Fortunately they said they could feed us there. Sandy had shrimp and I had a pizza which turned out to be monstrous. It was good but as hungry as I was, I could only eat half of it. Where's Abby when I need her?

After eating we went to the gift shop next door where they had a lot of Dam Bar apparel. I got a tshirt plus we got several items for people for gifts. After that it was back to the hotel to watch an episode of Midsomer Murders on my laptop.

The next morning was clear and warmer than the day before. It looked like the weatherman was right and it was going to be our best day. I had made reservations the night before to do a slot canyon hike. There are several near Page, the most famous being Antelope Canyon. We've done a lot of canyon hikes throughout Utah, but these are a bit different. The ones near Page are located on lands in the Navaho Nation and the only way to visit them is to go with a tour company. Normally that's exactly the opposite of what I am looking for when I go hiking. It's not exactly the freedom of the wilderness. But the Navaho people pretty much got stuck with land that nobody else wanted. If they have figured out a way to wring some kind of a livelihood out of it, hey, good for them. So in this case I was good with going with a tour company.

Antelope Canyon is by far the best known, but there are about a half dozen companies that do tours through it. Once a few years ago when I stopped in Page overnight while passsing through I thought I would go on a quick tour in the morning before continuing on to my game convention. When I checked, every company was completely booked. Going with a tour group is not ideal but I'm ok with it. Big crowds too? No thanks. But there are several other canyons that are less well known. Only one company offered tours of Waterhole Canyon, and when I made reservations online it looked like there might only be a few other people in our group. It was also a lot cheaper than Antelope Canyon.

It was about a ten minute drive south from town to the start of the tour. When we got there we found that besides us there was another couple from Las Vegas and a family of four from Texas with middle-school age kids. With our guide that was only nine people. Our tour was the only one that morning so it wasn't bad at all.

We rode a shuttle on a rough dirt road for about ten minutes to where we started walking. We hiked a short distance down into a sandy wash and then turned to follow it. Almost immediatly there were sandstone cliffs lining the wash, and as we continued they narrowed. There were three main sections of canyon on our hike, with short areas between that were fairly open. The canyon was usually less than a hundred feet deep but when the walls came close it was quite spectacular. Sometimes the sandy floor of the canyon would disappear completely and we would be climbing/scrambling/sliding along the bottom of the stone walls.

All through the canyon the rock walls were in beautiful swirling shapes. Photographers take lots of artsy shots of the curves in the rock. In a few places there were ladders mounted to the rock to allow us to get past a difficult spot. Even though I am not a fan of tours, the guide's narrative was interesting. Finally after about an hour and a half of hiking we reached a metal stairway that allowed us to climb out of the canyon to a shelter where we could wait for the shuttle. It was an awesome hike and well worth it, even if we had to pay an entry fee.

While we waited for the shuttle I asked our guide Garrett about the Navaho Power Plant. Built in the early '70's near Page, it burned coal from a mine located nearby in the Navaho Nation. In years past, as I drove towards Page from Kanab, the three big smoke stacks of the power plant would be visible from many miles away. The power plant was always controversial because the Four Corners area has the best air quality of anywhere in the continental US. Environmental criticism and the lowering of the price of natural gas for power generation led to the power plant shutting down in 2019. In 2020 the three smoke stacks were demolished. I asked Garrett how the local people felt about the closure of the plant. Did they resent the loss of jobs? Or was it a good thing that the air and water pollution, which was considerable, had ended? He said that the people of the Navaho Nation were defintely glad to see the plant go. The power plant polluted the air and the coal mining that fed the plant took all of the very limited supply of ground water. Good for them. The ghost of Edward Abbey and I agreed with them.

The canyon hike wasn't very long so afterwards we did a short hike near town to Hanging Gardens. A short half mile hike, partially over slick rock, led to an alcove in some cliffs that was filled with plant life. Sheltered from the sun by the cliffs, seeps in the walls provided enough water to turn the cliff walls green. It was a dramatic contrast from the surrounding desert. The hike also provided nice views over Lake Powell. Short and easy, slick rock hikes are always fun.

Then it was time to play golf again. Today we didn't do as well as the day before, especially me. It's a good thing that my ego does not depend on my skill at golf. It was still fun and very scenic. After playing golf we headed to Bonkers, the #1 restaurant in Page according to TripAdvisor. We got there just as they opened but one other party was already waiting at the door. By the time we finished eating the entire place was full. Wow - who would have expected Page to be mobbed during spring break?

The next day the forecast was for showers most of the day and it was pretty accurate. We went to Ranch House Grill for breakfast. It's only open for breakfast and lunch and according to TripAdvisor is the best place in town to get breakfast. Their tagline is "Where the locals go" and when we got there it seemed pretty accurate. I'm not a breakfast person and I don't care much for breakfast foods but it's Sandy's favorite meal so we wanted to hit this place while we were in town. It was crowded but we managed to get a table. The reviews didn't lie - it was really good, although it wasn't fast. That didn't matter since we were killing time anyway because of the weather.

Afterwards we hit a couple of gift shops. We were surprised to see crowds of people waiting outside the tour places for Antelope Canyon. It made our decision to do Waterhole Canyon the day before instead look pretty good. Besides hiking in a crowd, and besides the discomfort of hiking in the rain, a slot canyon didn't seem like the place to go on a rainy day anyway.

In between rain showers we did do a short hike to a viewpoint for Glen Canyon and the Dam. It was another spot that I had seen the sign for many times as I drove through town but had never checked it out. Both the dam and the bridge were an impressive sight. The engineer in me could certainly appreciate them. But the canyon was so amazing that I couldn't help but sympathize with the characters in the Monkey Wrench Gang who wanted to see the dam removed. Maybe some day it will go the way of the Navaho Power Plant and the Colorado will be free again and upper Glen Canyon will rise out of the waters of Lake Powell.

We both enjoyed reading The Monkey Wrench Gang on this trip. Quite a bit of the action took place in and around Page and the Glen Canyon Dam. After reading in the book that there were thirteen churches on "Jesus Row", we counted as we drove down the street (which we did many times) and only came up with eleven. I guess things had changed in the fifty years since Abbey wrote the book. We were familiar with a lot of the other key locations in the book from previous trips, like Natural Bridges National Monument or the road from Blanding to Hanksville.

That night we went to El Tapatio for dinner. Again, it was crowded but since we went early we were able to get in. It was good Mexican food and they had the biggest marqueritas that I have ever seen (that's a good thing!). After that it was time to go back to the hotel and get packed to leave the next day. Although the weather hadn't been perfect, it had been good enough for us to do a lot of fun stuff. We had hiked a slot canyon, played golf twice, done some short hikes, bought some tshirts and sampled most of the restaurants in town. Next day it would be time to move on.