Arizona - Horseshoe Bend

Gradually we left the snow behind as we descended from Zion down towards Page in Arizona. Things began to look a lot more desert-like, and the physical elements of the landscape started to look like a Roadrunner cartoon. The famous Horseshoe bend was our destination for the evening, an impressive overlook gives a full view of the entire loop in the river complete with dramatic cliffs. It was both monumental and terrifying. Monumental as the great yawning chasm opened up in front up us. Terrifying due to the absurd selfie-takers putting themselves and in some cases their children at risk as they posed on the edge, well away from the safety railings at the main view point. With my own son there I was taking no chances with either him or me, but my heart was in my mouth for almost the whole time as people behaved like utter idiots. Only a month before someone had died doing exactly what people were doing today, and presumably every hour of every day. It made me sick to watch actually, just the thought of what could happen and what the result would inevitably be. You can take the view that Darwinism will prevail, or you can just be unbelievably heart-in-my-mouth nervous for the safety of perfect strangers. I chose the latter, I’m not sure why.

We were there for the sunset, which in common with the rest of our trip basically failed to materialise. We got the briefest of rays before the cloud swallowed everything up again. No matter though, it was still quite an occasion, and we knew we would be back for the sunrise the following day. Guess what? We awoke to another winter wonderland, with a decent amount of snow on the ground and light snow continuing to fall. We went back to the overlook to find the canyon shrouded in mist to the extent we couldn’t even see the other side, let alone the river. It cleared a bit as the morning progressed, however with people continuing to behave like complete muppets but with added ice my delicate constitution could not cope and we left to do something else, namely breakfast. Meanwhile the snow continued to fall in the desert.