Wahweap is more developed than Bullfrog, it has a huge hotel with a restaurant, a bar and even a pool. The campsite had a very large campstore with laundry and showers. Given how empty and quiet Bullfrog was, we couldn't believe that just the otherside of the lake in Wahweap, the campsite was full as was the walk-in area and the overflow.
We stopped of on the way to Page at a grocery store for some supplies, it was the first time we've ever seen goats in the car park. We always find it interesting going to a grocery store in a different state as in each state there is a slight difference in the food available, in particular around meat and vegetables. This grocery store was in an tribal area so the majority of the customers must have been Native Americans. We saw goat and mutton available (hopefully they weren't related to the poor goats in the parking lot!) and huge sacks of specialist flour for making Fry Bread. This store also had an excellent bakery and we may have tried one of their handmade doughnuts :)
During our time at this side of Lake Powell, we only had one thing planned and that was to see Antelope Canyon. We hadn't pre-booked a tour, something which I would recommend you do if you are visiting here to make sure you get the time you want. We went into the store for Slot Canyon Tours and was lucky enough to get one of the last spaces available but it was on a 6:30am tour!
Lee is going to talk more about the tour in another blog entry but it was awesome!
Asides from Antelope Canyon, there was other exploring to be done!
We visited Glen Canyon Dam, a huge concrete arch gravity dam that manages the water flowing out of Lake Powell and downstream to the Grand Canyon. The visitors center at the dam was actually really good. There were lots of information stations and hands on exhibits that explains how the water is controlled and monitored to ensure the lower states and Mexico receive the right amount of water without damaging the ecosystems that live in and around the water. It was interesting to hear how they were trialing a new approach to releasing water so that it appears to flood, this is more representative of what happens in real life and whilst it has a dramatic short term effect, it also allows for longer term changes that would have been seen naturally without the dam in place.
There were daily tours at the dam which you could sign up for. We visited in the afternoon and were told that all tours after 12pm had been cancelled as it was too hot. We booked on the 10:30am tour the next morning, planning to go back to the dam after our Antelope Canyon tour. But there was a problem. We were not aware that you needed to arrive for the tour 30 minutes early to check in and go through security. We turned up at 10:30 to find that we were too late. We knew they were going to cancel the later tours due to the heat so decided reluctantly had to miss this out. Even though we missed the official tour, we still walked across the bridge which had sidewalks on either side with gaps in the fence to look through and take pictures.
We then drove back to the campsite stopping off at the scenic pull outs to get a good view of the lake. The water looked lovely from the top, really blue and inviting given how hot it was. We did think about kayaking around the lake but remembered how hot it was in Bullfrog.
On the way back to the campsite, we saw a sign to a beach. We parked up the car and walked down the trail. The beach was a hike to get to and whilst it was mostly downhill getting to the beach, it was a long climb up hill getting back to the car! Had we had some shade on the beach, we might have stayed for longer but even dipping our toes in the lake wasn't very cooling, if anything, it made you feel hotter due to the reflection of the sun off the water. We were surprised as well by the colour of the water, it looked like a dirty muddy grey, maybe from people kicking up the dirty from the bottom rather than the clear water we were expecting. This made the beach even less inviting so we headed back to the campsite to cool off.
We had two nights at the campsite in Wahweap. At first, we thought we were so lucky with the location of our site. We were in the tent only area and we had a huge site out the way from most people, it was a short walk to the rest room and even the shop, showers and laundry were close by. We started to realise early on that this was not going to be the 'perfect' campsite we had initially thought. The initial signs were the number of 2 person identical blue tents on the other sites around us. Normally, you might have 1 or 2 tents of different varieties on each site, it was odd to have 4, 5 and sometimes 6 tents that were identical on each site. Then we saw a number of large white mini buses with the word "Champions" written over them. Finally, when we went to the rest room, we realised what was going on. A very large group of French students had booked into the campsite but rather than being in the group area (which is where they should have gone!) they had booked the majority of the tent campsites in our loop and the next loop over. The rest rooms, with a small number of power supplies inside and outside, were being used to charge their phones which were being used to play French rap music and YouTube clips. They were no longer rest rooms but a 24 hour social club (they were in and around the rest rooms throughout the night when we got up to wee).
I don't want people thinking I'm a grumpy old English lady, I could have coped with several (hundred) French students hanging around the rest rooms but they were all clearly bored, seemed to hang out for most of the day in the campsite so they were noisy, they used our campsite as a short cut to the showers walking straight past us sometimes sitting near the fire and there were far too many of them for the campsite to cope with, the queues for the showers were so long, we ended up having to go late at night when they were dirty and disgusting from over use.
In one of the few non-French sites, we also had a Latin American family who most nights tried to go into competition with the French (c)rap music playing their own latin tunes very loudly well past quiet hours but what kept us awake was the huge argument they had one night. One of the girls started screaming and shouting at one of the boys, threatening to call the police. It sounded like a drink induced argument, but the whole family joined in. The police were not called but at least things did eventually quieten down.
The French students and Latin American family weren't the only issue we had. We noticed when we arrived that a number of tents had been seriously pegged down, many with rope to nearby trees and even to the picnic bench. We couldn't work out why when the sky was lovely and blue. Each night, a huge wind and rain storm came in. It lasted most of the night and was usually cleared up and back to blue sky by sunrise. We pegged our tent down as much as we could but the howling wind and the sound of the tent billowing makes it difficult to sleep, especially when you're keeping on eye open for a thunderstorm just in case you need to make a quick dash to the car for protection! We were lucky, our tent stood up against the wind even though many of the poles are really bent after the big storm at Monument Valley, they're a little more bent now after this! Some of the French students' tents didn't fare so well. Those who hadn't pegged in or put the poles in fully, came back from the restroom (aka the Social Club) to find a collapsed heap of material and plastic poles. Oh dear!
Asides from our neighbours, we cooked some lovely meals on the fire at this campsite, sunbathed in the scorching sun and managed to get a couple of hours sleep - usually during the day.
On the final day, we treated ourselves to a trip to a local bar / restaurant. The storm had come in early and it was too wet to cook on the fire and too windy to get the propane out, we wanted some decent wifi (which we'd been without for 5 days now) to get some blog entries posted and we wanted to listen to some decent music. We found a place called Dam Bar & Grill where we sat at the bar, shared some loaded fries and enjoyed the free power and wifi!
The Dam is pretty damn impressive and the lake and river looked very inviting especially with how hot it was. I was convinced there was a green field at the bottom of the empty side of the dam but now think it is just some residual water.
ReplyDeleteThe campsite and cooking looked good but a real shame about the other people there. That said, I think this is your first bad camping experience, or worst that you've reported.