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.

Do Not Enter

Dateline: Men’s Room in Zion National Park, June 2, 2009 -


I’ve never seen a road sign in a urinal before, but it certainly gets the message across.

All Aboard the Zion Bus

Tuesday, June 2 – Zion banned cars in the heart of the park beginning back in 2000, so you have to take a bus up the canyon to see it. The bus actually worked out really well, except that on the way back Boy Scout Troup 90 ended up taking over the bus. It was the 2 of us, a German couple, and a bunch of 12-year-old boys and their worn down shaperones. The tweens argued - loudly - for about 20 minutes about which game was the best Wii game of all time. Grrrreat.

They say that Zion is the most “traditional” national park in Utah, which seems to be true. The rock formations are gorgeous, and there are a bunch of hikes for all levels in the canyon. We did two of the easy ones: the first was Riverside walk, which takes you along the Virgin River. Serious hikers actually hike THROUGH the river, where it sometimes gets up to shoulder deep. Maybe next time…






The second was Weeping Rock, where water seeps through the layers of soft sandstone on the top, and then comes seeping out the sides of the cliff when it hits the harder shale underneath. It makes it seem like it is raining from the rocks, and it is like a hanging rain forest.

Breakfast at Zion

Tuesday, June 2 – We headed straight to Zion National Park first thing in the morning. We wanted to eat breakfast in Springdale, a town at the base of the canyon, but had to take a scenic, winding road through part of the park to get there. The views just on the road in were amazing. We then had breakfast at the Spotted Dog Café in Springdale. We sat outside on the patio, and the weather was perfect. Once we got fueled up and made a PB&J for a snack later, we headed back into the park.