New Years Eve With Champagne & Ribs in Antelope Canyon & Zion

We started News Years Eve day with a tour of Antelope Slot Canyon, which is something I have wanted to see for several years.  We really wanted to go on the longer Photography Extended Tour, but they don’t give that on holiday weekends, so we had to settle for the shorter standard tour.  Since the late 1990’s, people are only allowed in the canyon when part of a Navajo guided tour, and nobody is allowed in the canyon for more than 2 hours at a time, which is their way of keeping the crowd sizes controlled.

The magical light beams do not penetrate to the canyon floor during the winter, leaving the canyon suffused with a palette of pinks.  The canyons are every bit as beautiful as I expected, but the crowds were a bit difficult to contend with, making it hard to get the photographs I had hoped for.

After our all-too-brief Antelope Canyon tour, we headed off to Zion National Park, arriving around noon.  Zion has some spectacular scenery of multi-colored mountain faces, but they were surprisingly difficult to photograph well.  The afternoon did produce a few nice images though.

At one point, we came across a family of big horn sheep, which garnered the expected cluster of tourist cars, each of which attracted others to see what was being watched.

We continued through the park, until we found a location that looked promising for sunset images.

We then went to our hotel, only to discover there was no room for us!  We had reserved a room the night before using Expedia, but the hotel said they never received the reservation, and they were fully booked.  Oops…

The hotel desk clerk (whom I am pretty sure was also the owner) was very helpful though, and called around town to find us another room.  We ended up with a very nice room about a block away, and at a lower rate than we had originally expected to pay.  The night was saved – I was not looking forward to spending New Years Eve driving around looking for a vacancy!

We had asked the original desk clerk where a good place for dinner was, and she instantly suggested Oscar’s in town.  When we checked into our subsequent hotel, we asked there too.  That clerk gave three possibilities, with Oscars again heading the list, so Oscars it was.

As we were loading our luggage from the car to our room, a local came over and told us there would be a fireworks display at 7:00 at the local school ball field.  We set up our nightly photograph download to the computer, and headed out to see the display.  We got there just as the first fireworks went into the sky.  The display lasted 10 minutes, and was better than we usually see in such small towns.  We had decided not to bring tripods and large cameras, so Evelyn experimented with her handheld point-and-shoot that we always carry as backup.

We then headed over to Oscar’s for dinner, hoping to beat the crowds that would likely head over from the fireworks too.  We found a tiny restaurant with only 11 tables, completely filled with a short line outside.  We were right about the rush, as the line grew to a couple dozen people within 10 minutes of our arrival.  Evelyn had baby-back ribs that were fabulous (some of the best we have ever had), and I had the Murder Burger – “a burger good enough to kill for” according to the menu.  And it almost was, at that.

Utah is a state that strictly regulates liquor, so it can only be purchased in state owned stores.  It also turns out they are not allowed to sell any liquor chilled if over 5%, so we picked up a bottle of champagne warm off the shelves.  We had never tried “chardonnay champagne”, so decided to give that a try.  We put it in the fridge in our room, and waited till midnight to open it.

We don’t recommend it though… The “chardonnay” tasted more like apple cider, and not particularly good cider at that.  Evelyn got a headache from the “cheap champagne” and we tossed out half the bottle.

Oh well, bad champagne, but a warm room and an excellent dinner in exotic mountain surroundings.  Over all, not a bad score for ending 2011.  If we can score that well in 2012, we will be very happy with the year. 🙂

Happy News Years Everyone!

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To be content with little is difficult.  To be content with much is impossible.

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