Page, first part

Horseshoe.

This year we decid­ed to vis­it Page. This is a small town (about 43 sq. kilo­me­ters) and with a pop­u­la­tion of about 8,000 peo­ple, but it lies at the inter­sec­tion of many tourist routes and there­fore is very pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for tourists from all over the world. As one of our acquain­tances says: “Who­ev­er has not been to Page has not seen Arizona”.

The city is locat­ed in the Nava­jo Indi­an Reser­va­tion, in north­ern Ari­zona, near the state of Utah. There is only one school in the city, sev­er­al streets, a bunch of dif­fer­ent con­fes­sion church­es, and a lot of hotels with many more are being built. The city is locat­ed on the Col­orado Plateau at an alti­tude of 1300 meters above sea lev­el, and there­fore, after the heat in Phoenix, it was a lit­tle cooler.

The first place of inter­est we vis­it­ed when we were just approach­ing the city was the world famous Horse­shoe. The Col­orado Riv­er here makes a horse­shoe shape turn, mak­ing its way through numer­ous deep canyons and the view is stun­ning. The inter­net is stuffed with pic­tures of this place, but peo­ple are flood­ing in to take thir own pic­tures here. it takes your breath away while you’re stand­ing on the edge of the canyon. I did not want to leave at all, but sud­den­ly a strong wind arose, and it was dan­ger­ous to stay near the cliff.

In gen­er­al, the Col­orado Riv­er is very inter­est­ing, it makes its way through numer­ous canyons and turns into a full-flow­ing riv­er, then dries up to a stream. The Col­orado Riv­er flows into the Gulf of Cal­i­for­nia, but the last time it reached the bay was in 1998 dur­ing heavy floods.

Glen Canyon.

The next place of inter­est was Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Pow­ell. The dam began con­struc­tion on the Col­orado Riv­er in 1956.

At the same time, a work­ing set­tle­ment for builders was found­ed, from which the city of Page lat­er grew on land exchanged from the Nava­jo tribe. Reser­voir was formed as a result of the dam’s con­struc­tion, set­tling down on the ter­ri­to­ry of two states, Utah and Ari­zona. This arti­fi­cial lake is the sec­ond largest reser­voir in the Unit­ed States, and a favorite vaca­tion spot for tourists.

The places here are beau­ti­ful, the coast­line is indent­ed with rocks of var­i­ous shapes and dif­fer­ent col­ors. There are many yachts on the lake, from small to huge. You can rent a boat, swim in the reser­voir and go fish­ing. Boat rental is orga­nized even in Page itself. We’ve seen them trans­port­ed around the city: a police car dri­ves ahead, fol­lowed by a huge truck on a huge plat­form drag­ging a huge yacht. Dur­ing our vis­it to the lake, the weath­er was cool (here it is 21 – 23 degrees) and no one was swim­ming yet, but we still man­aged to wash our hands in the Col­orado Riv­er waters.

In gen­er­al, Amer­i­cans love to trav­el. They dri­ve their trail­ers which look like a huge house. True, on the roads they are a lit­tle annoy­ing, because they move slow­er than nor­mal vehi­cles and you can’t see the road in front of them.