This is the second series of my tour of National Parks in the United States this year. Grand Canyon is probably the most famous place among the Japanese people.
How to get around
I flew from SF Bay Area, where I am based, to Las Vegas by airplane and then I rented a car and toured around the city. We went to Grand Canyon National Park, Page (Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon), Zion National Park, and Death Valley National Park.
Page is the name of the city, and although it is not itself a National Park, it has special scenery that is not found anywhere else.
Many people recommend Sedona and Monument Valley, and I would have liked to go to those places, but it’s hard for kids to go to so many events just to see the scenery, so I decided to go this way.
Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon is literally a huge canyon. To put it simply, it’s a huge canyon with many points around it where you can look into the canyon.
The valley itself is largely the same, so the views from the closest points are very similar. As you get farther away from the west and east sides of the valley, the scenery changes somewhat. If anything, the time of day is probably the most important factor in changing the view.
In spite of it being October, we were hit by a sudden heavy snowfall due to the cold air passing through the area. After leaving National Park, the snow on the road disappeared and we were able to drive normally.
We would have arrived at Page in the morning and booked a tour to Antelope Canyon, but it seemed that the tour had been canceled due to bad weather. I noticed the possibility of snow when I looked at the weather forecast a few days ago and booked another tour for the next morning, which was really nice to be aware of. The day before, there were no spots available to book and we would not have been able to go to Antelope Canyon.
The Antelope Canyon tour can be canceled before 24 hours, so it might be a good idea to make reservations for two days in advance just in case of bad weather.
Page
Horseshoe Bend
From Grand Canyon, it usually takes about two and a half hours, but since there was snow, it took about three and a half hours to get to Page.
I don’t know where downtown Page is, but it took about 10 to 15 minutes by car from the area where the hotels are lined up to reach the parking lot of Horseshoe Bend. It’s pretty easy.
From the parking lot, it was about 10 minutes to walk to the spectacular view of Horseshoe Bend. Due to the cold air and cloudy weather, it was cool for October, and the walk was just right.
I had seen pictures on the Internet, but the actual scenery was even more stunning. I don’t think there are many places like this in the world. There are a lot of places where the photographer is so good that you are disappointed when you get there, but this place was just as good as the pictures.
Antelope Canyon
Antelope Canyon is also famous for its stunning gradation. The reason why people say they’ve seen this landscape before is probably that it was used as the wallpaper for Windows a few generations ago.
I signed up for the 8:45 am tour of Lower Antelope Canyon. By the way, you have to make a reservation at least a week in advance, otherwise, it’s tough to get in. It was not a busy season, so it was still good, but if it was a busy season, it might be better to make a reservation much earlier. As I mentioned earlier, it is possible to cancel up to 24 hours in advance.
Because of Covid19, the tour party was smaller than before, it consisted of one guide and six to seven guests. There are two companies, Ken and Dixie, and the owners are brothers.
It took us about 10 minutes to walk to the entrance. The area around the entrance was quite narrow, with only enough space for one foot to step on. If you have children under 5 years old, you may want to join the Upper Antelope Canyon tour, which has no age limit.
There are some narrow and sometimes wide areas, but the area closer to the entrance has a very distinctive color with little view of the sky, and the iPhone camera needs to be set to Vivid mode to capture this color well. The guides are very experienced in this area, and they will tell you how to do it.
I was told that this is where the Windows wallpaper is, but I don’t remember where it is in the many photos I took. Anyway, it was an amazing experience with a completely new view.
Originally, the whole area was covered with layers of reddish rocks that were visible everywhere. In addition to that, the area around Antelope Canyon seems to have a topography where flash floods occasionally flow in. The guide explained that the water had cut into the soft rock and created Antelope Canyon, which started out as a small crack but became deeper and deeper.
If the weather is bad, the tour will not be held because of the danger of flooding. On the day of our original reservation, all tours had been canceled.
Big John’s Texas BBQ
It was lunchtime when we left the Page, so we went to the number one ranked restaurant that came up in a TripAdvisor search, and we were told that Porkrib was recommended, so we just ordered it. It was an American dish, but the fat had been trimmed off, probably by cooking it for a long time, so it wasn’t overpowering.
Zion
I thought it would be a good time to see the autumn leaves, but it was not. I just went through the park.
Death Valley
The next day after returning to Las Vegas, I took a day trip to Death Valley, which is located in California, and would have taken me 8 hours to get there from my home, but only 2.5 hours from Las Vegas.
Death Valley has the world’s highest temperature record, and it was hot enough even in mid-October. On the way to the valley, there was no sense of life, it was like the valley of death.
Las Vegas
Although it was not my destination, I stayed in Las Vegas on my arrival day and the latter three days.
On my arrival day, I went to Sushi House Goyemon for lunch. It is a sushi restaurant that has an all-you-can-eat system that I had heard about from my colleagues. If you pay the nightly all-you-can-eat sushi fee of $27, you can eat all you can eat except for some menu items. Some of the menu items are sea urchin and sweet shrimp, which can only be ordered once.
The quality and cost performance is probably comparable to other all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants in Japan in the same price range. Noodles and curry-like dishes are also available. I’ll probably come back again next time I’m in Las Vegas.
The Japanese restaurant I went to in the latter half of my trip was Raku, where the portions were as modest as in Japan, and the cost performance was probably standard, but I didn’t think it was good.
Incidentally, when looking for a restaurant like this, I use Trip Advisor as a reference because there are few outliers, but I don’t look at Yelp because I don’t understand whether it is a ranking or an advertisement. However, Raku is in the ranking, but Goyemon is not. Perhaps word of mouth is still strong in this area.
I thought it would be better not to be in the middle of the Strip, but since it was still in the middle, it was busy until midnight.
