Upper Antelope Canyon & Grand Canyon North Rim in One Day: Our Road Trip from Las Vegas

Some travel plans are carefully organised months in advance.

This was not one of them.

Antelope Canyon wasn’t even on my list when we arrived in the US.

A few days earlier, while we were staying with a friend in Texas, I noticed a photograph on her wall. I asked where it was.

Antelope Canyon.

I looked it up. Then I looked at the map.

By American road-trip standards, it seemed close enough to Las Vegas.

That was pretty much it. I wanted to see it.

I tried to find tickets online, but I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. There were different canyons, different operators, different tours and different times. I knew we needed a guide, but I didn’t have a reservation.

So we did what seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

We got in the car and went.

Leaving Las Vegas — whatever time it was

We left Las Vegas very, very early.

Our plan — and I’m using the word plan quite generously here — was to get to Antelope Canyon early enough to have a chance of joining one of the tours that day.

I remembered that the last tours we might realistically make were sometime in the early afternoon.

We just had to get there.

And then something strange started happening with the time.

I looked at my watch.

It showed one time.

My phone showed another.

Then I looked at the clock in the car.

A third.

I’m European. I live in Poland. The entire country has one time zone.

I was not prepared for this.

As we drove, one device would change the time. Then another would change. Then something seemed to change back.

Over the course of the drive, it felt as though the time changed about six times.

Eventually, we had absolutely no idea what time it actually was.

Or, more importantly, where it was that time.

Was this the time where we had just been? Where we were now? Where we were going?

Was the phone right?

The watch?

The car?

Who knows.

We had no tickets, no reservation and, by this point, no reliable concept of time.

But we did have a road in front of us.

So we kept driving.

We actually got into Upper Antelope Canyon

When we finally arrived, there was still one fairly important question.

Could we actually get in?

We went to the window, explained that we didn’t have a reservation and asked if there was any chance of joining one of the remaining tours.

Somehow, there was.

Great.

Then came the payment.

We were told that we couldn’t pay in cash.

I didn’t have my card with me.

I did, however, have cash.

So we explained the situation.

There was a bit of confusion at the window, and eventually the woman told us that if we were going to pay in cash, we needed to have the exact amount.

We didn’t.

I had some larger notes and a little smaller cash, but not the exact amount she had quoted us.

I showed her what I had.

She looked at it.

“OK.”

And that was it.

We paid what we had and got onto the tour.

What surprised us even more was that the amount we ended up paying for the two of us was only a little more than the regular price for one person.

I still don’t know exactly why the woman at the window let us through for that amount.

We never found out.

And just to be clear: this is not a travel tip.

Please don’t turn up at Upper Antelope Canyon without a reservation, without a card and with a random collection of dollar bills because you read that it worked for us.

It worked for us that day.

We got lucky.

A few minutes earlier, we had been standing at a ticket window with no reservation and the wrong way to pay.

Now we were going to see Antelope Canyon.

I wasn’t asking any more questions.

Upper Antelope Canyon

Upper Antelope Canyon is on Navajo land and you visit it with an authorised guide.

Our group was small, maybe eight or ten people, and we travelled with our Navajo guide to the entrance.

And then we walked inside.

This was the photograph from my friend’s wall.

Except now I was standing in it.

The walls, the shapes, the colours, the way the light came in from above — it was beautiful.

Our guide showed us where to look and helped us take photographs from the best angles. He knew exactly where to stand and what to notice, and pointed out things we probably would have walked straight past.

One thing I hadn’t expected at all was the temperature.

Outside, Arizona was hot.

Inside the canyon, it was wonderfully cool.

For a while, we just walked and looked.

A few days earlier I hadn’t even known I would be coming here.

Now I was inside the place I had seen in a photograph on a wall in Texas.

I was very happy I’d asked where that photo was taken.

Apparently we also brought rain to Arizona

When we came out, it rained.

Arizona. July.

Rain.

Of course.

It lasted about ten minutes.

Ten minutes later, Arizona switched the oven back on.

That was the end of the rain.

And it probably should have been the end of our sightseeing for the day.

It wasn’t.

So… what about the Grand Canyon?

The Grand Canyon had been part of our road-trip plans from the beginning.

What we hadn’t decided was exactly how and when we would see it.

After Antelope Canyon, I looked at the map again.

The North Rim was there.

And since we were already in Arizona…

It didn’t look that far away.

By this point in our American trip, our European understanding of the word near had become rather flexible.

We decided to go.

A small lesson in American petrol stations

First we needed petrol.

We stopped at a gas station and discovered another little difference between driving in Europe and driving in the US.

We went inside and prepaid $100, filled the car and then went back inside to collect the change.

Nothing dramatic.

Once you know how it works, it makes perfect sense.

We didn’t.

Now we did.

Petrol sorted.

North Rim next.

Grand Canyon North Rim

We reached the North Rim late in the afternoon, probably around five or six.

It was cooler there.

There were very few people around.

And after the driving, the heat, Antelope Canyon, the rain and all the confusion of the day, suddenly everything became quiet.

At the entrance, the ranger waved us through.

I want to be clear about this because I don’t want anyone turning up expecting the same thing: normally you need to pay the entrance fee or have a valid pass.

We were simply waved through that afternoon.

Another bit of luck.

And then we saw the Grand Canyon.

I had obviously seen photographs before.

It didn’t matter.

It was enormous.

We had bottles of water with us and we sat down.

And for once, I didn’t feel the need to go anywhere else.

We stayed for around two hours.

Mostly, we just looked.

There had been so much movement that day — getting up ridiculously early, driving, checking clocks, trying to get into Antelope Canyon, driving again.

And now there was nothing we had to do.

The canyon was in front of us. There were hardly any people around. It was cooler. We had our water.

So we sat there.

I remember that part of the day very differently from the rest of it.

Antelope Canyon was exciting. I wanted to look around every corner and take photographs.

At the Grand Canyon, I didn’t need to do anything.

I just wanted to stay for a while.

Flying over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter is still on my list.

I still want to see it from above. Very much.

But that afternoon, after such a long and slightly chaotic day, I didn’t need another attraction.

I needed those two hours of quiet.

And the North Rim gave us exactly that.

It is more remote and far less visited than the South Rim, and access is seasonal. It isn’t somewhere you can simply assume will be accessible at any time of year. 

We happened to be there when we could.

So the helicopter is still waiting for me.

That day, I was happy to sit.

Eventually, of course, we had to leave.

Las Vegas was still a long way away.

Two canyons, one very long day

We got back to Las Vegas very late.

I don’t even need to tell you exactly what time.

After that morning, I had lost all confidence in clocks anyway.

What I remember much better is the day itself.

We had left Las Vegas ridiculously early without tickets to Antelope Canyon and without knowing whether we would get in.

For half the drive, we weren’t even sure what time it was.

Somehow, we got there.

Somehow, there were places available.

Somehow, the payment situation worked out too.

We walked through Upper Antelope Canyon.

It rained in Arizona for ten minutes.

Then we looked at a map and decided to drive to the Grand Canyon North Rim.

And at the end of a very long day, we sat there with our bottles of water and hardly anyone around.

If I did it again, I would book Antelope Canyon in advance.

Definitely.

I would also understand the time situation before leaving Las Vegas instead of discovering somewhere on the road that my watch, phone and car had apparently stopped speaking to each other.

And I would check that the North Rim was open before setting off, because it is seasonal.

But I wouldn’t change the day itself.

A few days earlier, Antelope Canyon had been nothing more than a photograph on my friend’s wall.

I saw it.

I wanted to go.

So we went.

And I’m very glad we did.

More life, please.