There is neither cell phone reception nor camp Wi-Fi in Horseshoe Bend.  After a day or so one realizes that this is not normal and that others may not understand the situation.  We found a spot three miles south that gets two bars, and the next day we visited the highest point on a road in this Rec Area and got three bars!  This high spot is known as the Devil Canyon Overlook and it was built for its view as opposed to its cell reception.   Near as I can tell nobody else went there for cell or Wi-Fi, but there weren’t that many visitors, so this is small sample analysis and therefore meaningless.

The views from the Overlook are quite impressive.  It’s an ancient canyon that cuts through maybe 800 million years of sedimentation, along the way exposing rock formations dating back before the Triassic and even before the Cambrian.  My paleontology is shaky, but I believe Triassic was the dawn of the dinosaurs, birds, and those 35-point underdogs at the time, early mammals.   Cambrian was 500 to 550 million years ago when simple multi- and one-celled animals somehow evolved far enough to create a proliferation of new species (mollusks and arthropods mostly) in an evolutional epoch known as the Cambrian Explosion.  Cambrian was the day of the trilobite, my friend.  That goes way, way back.  How many trilobites have you known, aside from a few guys in upper management?

Kat spotted wild horses on the trip up, and then she saw a young big horned sheep.  I saw a new bird, the cliff swallow, and the view of half a billion years of geology with a river at the bottom was so impressive.

Kat’s pictures tell the story.  Here’s the artist herself.