A few days ago, I went on a road trip with two good friends to defray some post-qualifying exam stress. (No, I haven't heard the results of the test yet.) We drove about 6 hours, hung-over after a celebratory kegger, from Tucson to Lake Powell, which is smack in the center of the border between Arizona and Utah. It's a cool drive; you get to watch desert turn into pine forest as you drive up a mountain through Flagstaff on the way and the temperature drops 30 degrees. Then it gets friggen hot again as you come back down and drive through the Painted Desert, which consists of blobby dunes that look like some little kid's crayon set melted into the sand.
Lake Powell used to be Glen Canyon, yet another magnificent geological feature of the area carved out by the Colorado River. In the early 1950's, the Bureau of Reclamation build the Glen Canyon Dam under Eisenhower, which flooded the canyon for the purpose of creating a reservoir for the southwestern states. Environmentalists of the time strongly opposed the whole dam construction, but Lake Powell is still a very beautiful spot to visit. 
The water is a caribbean turquoise blue against the canyon walls-- totally unnatural looking, but gorgeous nonetheless. I have to say it's nice too that there's a body of water for desert dwellers to go in the summer to motor boat around, go swimming, and escape the heat.
Megan, Lori and I rented kayaks for a day, and did some awesome canyon exploring by water and our own arm power! We found some cool canyon walls to jump off of into the water below for an adrenaline rush.On our way back toward civilization, we stopped in Page, AZ
to hook up with a tour of Antelope Canyon with Navajo guides (access to this canyon is restricted to the Navajo tribe). This narrow canyon, carved out of sandstone by rushing floods, is gorgeous for the vibrant color of its walls, and for the smooth, awesome shapes of the walls. 
Some of the "rooms" of the canyon are shaped like a corkscrew from a whirlpool effect. We took some pictures of the canyon, but here are a couple taken by professionals, since ours don't really do the experience justice.How cool is it that all of this was just a car ride away?
2 comments:
Hey Suz,
I am glad you had a good time! But I have to insert a link to a good discussion of American dam-building in general, and the Glen Canyon dam in particular. It's not the lost wonder, perhaps, that the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite is, but Glen Canyon is the dam credited with changing America's opinion on dams.
http://www.mindfully.org/Water/2004/Dam-NationJan04.htm
I was particularly struck by the fact that both Barry Goldwater *and* the President of the Sierra Club at the time said they profoundly regretted agreeing to the Glen Canyon Dam. I can't think of two people more totally opposed to each other on probably every other issue.
Oh man, Lake Powell looks awesome! Damnable dam aside, I definitely want to go there next time I'm in AZ or UT. And that canyon looks pretty sweet too - I'd never heard of that one before...
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