Hiking through Bryce

Wednesday, June 3 - It took us about two hours and forty-five minutes to do the hike through the canyon. After we got through Wall Street, we also saw a rainbow between the clouds above the canyon.

Also, I don’t think I mentioned yet what they call the rock formations in Bryce: “Hoodoos.” Yes, it’s true. After looking at tons of hoodoos, we started seeing things in them – faces, bodies, castles, fists… Random songs also went through our heads, like Simon and Garfunkel... "Who do, who do you think your foolin'?"

Wall Street in Bryce Canyon

Wednesday, June 3 - We took a hike down though the canyon along two trails – The Navajo Loop and the Queens Garden Trail. The Navajo Loop starts with a steep descent into the canyon where you walk down a bunch of switchbacks. Down at the bottom, where the canyon walls are really close together, they call it Wall Street.

There was also an amazing sight down there: a Ponderosa Pine tree that reaches from the canyon floor all the way up to the top to reach the light. Everywhere we turned, there was another amazing view. We took so many pictures that it is difficult to choose just a few to include here. The sky was so blue - it made an amazing contrast to the red rocks.

Good Morning Bryce

Wednesday, June 3 - While we didn't quite make it up to see Bryce Canyon at sunrise, we did make it out for an early morning walk before breakfast. As you can see, it was a little chilly...

We also thought it was really interesting to see how the soft sandstone erodes around the trees along the rim so quickly that it exposes the roots.

The Road to Bryce

Tuesday, June 2 – We finished exploring Zion by the middle of the afternoon, so we headed out to Bryce Canyon. We had to backtrack a bit on that scenic road through Zion, which was great - we could see all of the views in the other direction. There are two tunnels through the rock, one which was built in 1930 and is over 1 mile long. Sandy loves tunnels.

It was only about 85 miles to Bryce, so we were able to get to Bryce before dinner! This was a huge accomplishment, since we normally seem to get to places after 9pm. We were lucky enough to be able to reserve a cabin at the Bryce Canyon Lodge, which was awesome. Another trip back in time. The cabins have been really well restored, so it was very comfortable. Some of our neighbors walked by just as we were moving in, so we asked them to take a picture of us on our porch… Great place! Well, except for the fact that we discovered - as you well know by now – that there was little to no cell phone service in the

park, which meant no checking email, phone calls or blogging… I wasn’t surprised about this,

but it absolutely shocked and horrified Sandy. What are we going to do?? Well, we found an awesome activity…

At 8:30pm we attended an astronomy presentation let by Ranger Don, and then we did some stargazing after class when it got dark. Bryce is one of the darkest places in the country, meaning it has the least light pollution. You can see 7500 stars in the night sky. They had four very powerful telescopes set up outside. These weren’t your ordinary telescopes that you’d have on your back porch. They looked like canons. Two of them were about 24 inches in diameter, and you had to get up on a ladder to look into the eyepiece. My favorite was Saturn. You could clearly see the rings and 3 of its planets. It looked completely fake – like someone had put Saturn stickers on the inside of the telescope. Sandy liked M13 – the most famous globular cluster in the northern hemisphere and about 25,000 light years from earth. It has as many as a million stars in it. We also got an up close look at the surface of the moon and a ring nebula. All in all, a *stellar* evening. Even without connectivity.