About the Image(s)

Here's my image. It does have some people in it but I'm interested in how to best process a landscape image that is hazy, yet bright with strong shadows.
This is Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. It is quite impressive. As the case with most of my travels, I viewed the canyon as part of a tour group. So I had no control over the time of arrival, etc. It was a clear bright day, but a little hazy resulting from the eruption of the Kilauea Volcano. I wanted to get an image that would reflect the vast scope of the canyon and the rugged topography. I selected the best overlook and shot (hand held) a series of 20 images, merging them into a panorama in Lightroom. I included people in another overlook to provide a better sense of scale, and I liked the backlighting on them. The merged image was somewhat hazy with deep shadows. I cropped the image, lightened the shadows, dehazed. Then I used a brush to lighten areas of the image to increase the perception of depth. Some of the clouds were blown out so I replaced the sky with one that looked very similar. So, what do you think of my approach, considering the limitations of being with a tour group?