Three-day weekends were made for adventuring, right?
I’m trying to make a habit out of making my government-granted three-day-weekends into longer trips. You guys know me. You know how much I hate how little vacation time we get here in the United States. You know how good I am at cramming as much as possible into a short trip. (See: Tulum, Berlin, Seattle, etc.)
So, the idea of driving somewhere eight hours a day for a day trip during a three-day weekend? Doesn’t sound all that bad to me. (That’s what I did for New Year’s weekend, if you happened to miss that post.)
Luckily, my coworker Jane has the same sense of adventure (she’s an RPCV too!) and she was also down to drive out-of-state to a National Park for MLK weekend.
However, life (AKA: COVID) had other plans. While we had planned to do either Bryce Canyon up in Utah or Joshua Tree over in California, COVID cases were amping up and travel restrictions were put back into place.
So, we decided to take a day trip up to Page instead.
If you guys didn’t know, Page is pretty well-known for Horseshoe Bend.
Which, uh… is pretty much exactly why we went up to Page.
We would have gone to Antelope Canyon too, but it’s closed due to COVID. Oh well, another day.
We stopped at Whole Foods to pick up food, packed our cooler and made the two-hour drive up to the Arizona/Utah border.
One of the things I really, really love about Arizona is that — even though it takes pretty much forever to drive anywhere, the drives are NEVER boring. There are mountain ranges, hills, cliffs, altitude changes. It’s all very scenic.
The drive from Flagstaff to Page is no exception. We stopped at Vermillion Cliffs because, well, pretty.
We made it to Horseshoe Bend, paid our $10 admission fee (fun fact: Horseshoe Bend is technically free since it’s part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, but there’s a $10 fee to use the parking lot, which is owned by the City of Page, Arizona), parked the Jeep and went to explore.
We made the .75-mile “hike” (look at me, a true Flagstaffian, scoffing at casual jaunts) along a dirt path to the bend, then set out our picnic.
I had some fruit and a tabbouleh salad, if you were wondering. (I know, you weren’t.)
I will say that — again — I’ve been taking COVID very seriously, and while many people at Horseshoe Bend weren’t wearing masks (…Arizona…) everything was socially-distanced enough that I felt pretty comfortable regardless. Jane and I didn’t wear our masks because we didn’t even come close to coming within six feet of anyone. The place was pretty vacant.
With that said, there really wasn’t too much to do here. Don’t get me wrong — there’s a lot to do at Horseshoe Bend! You can book helicopter tours, rafting tours… you can even camp down by the Colorado River. We saw several tents while we were visiting.
But, just by paying the $10 to park and then walking the less-than-one-mile “hike” to the bend? There wasn’t much to do short of taking photos. There was a fenced lookout and there were several unguarded areas to wander around, but no real hiking trails or footpaths or anything. I’d definitely suggest bringing a picnic lunch (like Jane and I did) and people watching, which is how we spent our hour by the bend.
It’s still really cool and definitely worth seeing/ taking photos with.
We had some more time to kill, and while we had been thinking about also finagling a trip to Monument Valley into our schedule, we forgot that we’re still working with limited daylight hours, and it’d be dark by the time we made it over into Navajo County.
So, we decided to explore Page a bit more.
We honestly just stopped at the first trailhead we found, which happened to be Hanging Garden Trail.
It was a quick 1.2-mile hike that gave us a chance to kill some more time up in Page, and I’d recommend it if you’re in the area and have an extra hour to kill before sunset.
Finally, we finished our day in Page by heading to Lake Powell to watch the sunset.
A fun fact: Lake Powell straddles both Utah and Arizona. We knew we were driving along the border of the two states, but didn’t realize we were hopping back-and-forth until we passed an underwhelming sign that said “welcome to Arizona” or “Arizona border” or something else anti-climactic.
We both made our first venture into the State of Utah without even realizing it.
Then, after we got back to Flagstaff, I was looking at a map of Lake Powell and realized that we were literally taking photos ON THE BORDER of the two states during the sunset.
Like, I’d request some better signage, but also, I don’t want that nonsense ruining my view of nature.
After sunset, we hopped back into the Jeep and made our two-ish hour drive back to Flagstaff for milkshakes and sleep.
Alrighty, anndd, even though nobody asked, here’s the affiliate link-laden widget detailing what I wore for the day.
It was definitely a good use of a day! Jane and I will likely be back to Page (again… post-COVID) to hike Antelope Canyon and try some of the local restaurants and whatnot.
This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please read my disclosure policy.
