Miles traveled: 50
Hours on Road: Only about 1. This was a hiking, not driving, kind of day.
States covered: 1 – Utah
We got a late, lazy start to our day. Everything in the big cooler had gone sour, so I had to go to the little store they have here and buy some new milk. They didn’t have cream for me to buy, but the guy let me take two of their little creamers that they offer for the coffee they sell at the store. Between a half gallon of milk and a bag of ice I spent over $5.00, so I think I deserved that coffee mate.
Our destination today was Bryce Canyon. It’s about 25 miles from Kodachrome Basin, so it wasn’t a bad drive. The first stop we made there was at the Visitors Center. I bought a map even though the Cannons had already recommended the hike we should do. We started at Navajo Loop and joined up with Queens Garden Loop, making it a 2.9-mile hike that generally takes 2-3 hours. Again, we’re so Ninja, it took us less than two hours. The beginning of Navajo Loop, if you start at Sunset Point, is about a quarter mile of short switchbacks in which you descend around 500 feet onto a 10-foot wide pathway that is lined with rock walls going up the 500 feet you’ve just descended. Somehow, a tall tree was growing in the middle of all this rock.
The canyon is full of hoodoos, “pillars of rock, usually of fantastic shape, left by erosion.” They start out as fins, the tall thin slabs that so impressed Jeff and me at Arches. Then erosion creates an arch, and further decimation to the arch leaves a hoodoo. They’re anywhere from red to orange to white to green. The color combinations are astonishing.
The valley floor was your typical dry riverbed muddy stuff with various forms of conifers providing some shade. We weren’t as interested in that aspect of the canyon, so that’s the part we rushed through, which allowed us to finish the hike so quickly. You’d think that the hikes take so long on average because the average American is so horribly out of shape; but the truth is, there are more non-Americans than Americans in this area, and they’re mostly Europeans who are in pretty good shape. So, I think they saunter along the pathways without rushing the way the boys and I do.
By the end of the hike it was getting pretty hot out. Parker felt another headache coming on, so we decided to go to the Bryce Canyon Lodge for lunch. The lady at Kodachrome had recommended it, and she hadn’t sold us a bad bill of goods yet (except for the scorpions, which I asked her about in the morning, saying we didn’t see any the night before. She said we probably have to go outside of the camping area to find them). Lunch was good. The boys got burgers and I got a chicken sandwich. Our waiter looked like their Uncle Mike and sounded like Jack Black. He asked us where we’d come from and that started up a whole conversation about traveling. By the end of our meal, he was our pal, and he didn’t charge us for the boys’ sodas.
Once again, there were storms all around us. Lightning strikes and thunder everywhere we looked, except directly overhead. We started to worry that we’d left our tent windows down and that it might be raining back at camp, but there was nothing we could do about it, so we stopped worrying.
After checking out Ruby’s Old Time Town (or something like that), we headed home. Ruby evidently owned all of Bryce Canyon at one time and donated it as a National Park (at least that’s what our friend at Kodachrome told us).
On our way back to camp we stopped at the Escalante/Grand Staircase Monument Visitors Center. I figured we’d find out how to get to the staircase, take a quick photo, and head on home. Turns out, the monument is not like any monument I’d ever heard of before. It covers more acreage than exists in the whole state of Connecticut. It starts at Bryce Canyon, where the layers of rock are red, and goes down four levels, or “steps”, with the rock on each step changing color. It extends as far as Zion National Park. Out west they have a much different idea of monuments than we Yankees do.
While at the Visitors Center, since the guy was so nice and helpful, I made the comment that we’re from Connecticut, and Connecticut doesn’t have any National anything. He told me that only Delaware doesn’t have any National anything. He didn’t know what Connecticut had, but he knew we had something. It so intrigued him that he looked it up on his computer. How many of you have heard of Weir Farm National Historic Site? It’s located in Branchville, CT, which is a little part of Wilton, much like Northville is part of New Milford. I told him, not only do I live quite close to Wilton, but I actually worked in Wilton for a while, and I’d never heard of either that section of Wilton or that National Historic Site. So, there you have it folks; Connecticut has a National Historic Site.
On the ride along the lonely road to Kodachrome, we noticed that the signs indicating cow crossings all had bullet holes in them. Of course we had to get a photo of that.
Back at camp, we saw that it hadn’t rained at all. Even if it had, we hadn’t left the windows down, so it would have all been fine, anyway. We stopped at the Visitor Center to get Cal a coloring book, and I asked the Ranger on duty if flash flooding was a concern at this camp. He said that the basin doesn’t get rainwater from anywhere except the basin, so it would have to rain awfully hard directly overhead for us to be in any kind of danger. I liked that answer.
We sat around all evening just coloring, reading, and relaxing. I cannot get over how peaceful the area is: it’s the perfect temperature and has no noise except that which nature provides. I love it here – thanks Vance.
For corresponding photos, go to:
http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1925665027/a=2740108027_2740108027/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/
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