National treasure hidden away in plain sight!

Antelope Canyon: A surrealist dream come to life.

Antelope Canyon spread all about, a swirl of colors and twisting shapes, beautiful and poetic. Climbing down into the lower canyon is like tumbling into a serpentine maze that manages to be both claustrophobic and expansive. The hidden space -- it's beneath the scarred and sun-bleached landscape of northern Arizona -- is just one of many highlights on a recent trip out West with two of my brothers and a nephew.

The journey began in another colorful place, Las Vegas, a jarring mix of ginormous hotels and casinos, souvenir shops and bars, upscale retail stores, malls and specialty restaurants. Hordes of tourists, conventioneers and locals jostle their way along the city's neon-soaked strip, the air heavy with the stench of cigarette smoke, hope, greed and, yes, sadness.

After all, only a week earlier a gunman had murdered 58 people attending a country music concert in Vegas and injured hundreds of others in what is now considered the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. That's not to suggest that the city has gone dark. It continues to twinkle, especially at night when a pleasing blend of music and lights offer up dreams of hedonistic delights that add weight and meaning to the city's marketing slogan, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!"

Las Vegas: Still twinkling despite recent tragedy.

For me and my traveling companions -- Gary, Larry and Ryan -- the city was mostly a footnote on this trip, a brief stop and gathering spot. Truth to tell, we were much more interested in spending time with Mother Nature then ogling showgirls or feeding the slots!

The good news is that it only takes a moment to shake the Vegas vibe and find a welcoming landscape of craggy hills and sun-baked plains nearby. I-15 splits Vegas and crawls across the southeast corner of Nevada, just touching the northwest tip of Arizona before playing out in southern Utah.

Mother Nature has done a splendid job here, filling the region with natural wonders and beauty: soaring mountains and majestic canyons; verdant meadows and burbling brooks; pristine rivers and lakes and an abundance of wildlife. So it's not at all surprising that the area has a number of state and national parks featuring a wide range of awesome sights.

Finally out and about, our little group took a short break at Valley of Fire State Park, 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It's mostly a bleak and desolate prairie filled with brilliant formations of eroded sandstone and sand dunes, all aflame in shades of orange. The landscape is grand an unique, both bizarre and beautiful.

Zion National Park: Grand and Unique, stunning and beautiful.

Truth to tell, such words and thoughts could be mixed and matched and easily used to describe the half dozen or so places we visited over the next several days, including Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah. We then turned south and, backtracking a few hours, explored the Glen Canyon National Recreation area and a couple of slot canyons buried in a rocky and remote area of Arizona known as the Navaho Nation Land.

The canyons, the last stop on our mystical and magical dance with Mother Nature, provided a colorful exclamation point for the journey. Only a day earlier we had been walking about the ancient hoodoos of Bryce Canyon -- tall, thin spires of rock that spilled across the landscape -- certain that we had been privy to the very best Gaia had to offer.

Au contraire mon ami!

Bryce Canyon: Bizarre hoodoos dot the landscape.

The lower Antelope Canyon, on the outskirts of Page, Ariz., is a surrealistic dream come to life, a glorious blend of light and color, eroded rock and Navaho sandstone. Flash floods helped form the undulating corridor, smoothing out hard edges over time and creating "flowing" shapes in the rock.

The canyon, opened to the public in the mid-1990s, is about 120 feet deep. You enter from above, gingerly working your way down a series of metal steps, in some spots having to squirm through small openings in the rock with little to hold onto. Once on the ground you'll have to weave your way along the twisting canyon floor, squeezing around spots where the path becomes pinched and outcroppings of rock block your path.

The traveling gang: Ron, Gary, Larry and Ryan.

The trip, of course, is worth the effort.

I've been fortunate enough to see a number of natural and man-made wonders in my life: the Grand Tetons and Grand Canyon; the Eiffel Tower and Tower of London; Masada and the Western Wall; the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge!

The Antelope Canyons easily rest alongside these other places as wonderful and wondrous. The lower canyon is both beautiful and awesome; its colors and shapes an ode to the quiet, unyielding power of nature. Given the right frame of mind, it's here and in other such sanctuaries that I find the static of life gives way to something grand and sacred, a national treasure hidden away in plain sight!