Bryce Canyon
I woke up at 8am to see snow everywhere. The sun was still low in the sky, but the sky was clear and the grounds were silent. It was quite magical ☺ I couldn’t help but grab my camera and snap a few shots of this winter wonderland.
Afterwards, I went back to bed for a bit until around 10am. I made my way down the ridiculously muddy road to the main office to officially check in. I happened to be right behind a lady in line who mentioned that she had arrived late last night in an RV and had gotten stuck in the park trying to find her campsite in the snow, and that she had seen two girls from Florida who were also stuck, and were wearing flip flops! So I laughed and told her that that had been us, and that we were actually from NY but our rental car had a FL license plate. Too funny!
Driving out of the park, it was as if it had never snowed last night. The roads were clear, the sky was blue – it was a pretty ideal day for hiking. But first, we had to fuel up both our car and ourselves, calling for gas and lunch in town. We ate at the Golden Hills restaurant, which quite unfortunately was overtaken by Asian tourists at the time of our visit. Oh, but this establishment redeemed itself by stocking each table with baskets of books with titles such as “Geezerhood” and “The Fine Art of Worrying”, and topics like mountain men and miners. And my meal was surprisingly tasty!
The drive up to Bryce Canyon was gorgeously scenic, and I spent most of it with my mega-zoom lens sticking out the window. We saw plenty of cows and horses along the way, and remnants of snow on the mountains we passed by. Such a nice change from the city, that’s for sure.
Just outside of the park, we stopped at a general store for snacks. I mean, there was a sign outside in the parking lot that advertised for “touristy stuff”, so how could we NOT stop? And oh, it did not disappoint: inside they sold the Book of Mormon, as well as a local beer called Polygamy. Utah, you are too cool.
It was a bright but chilly day at Bryce Canyon. We hiked the Navajo/Queens Garden loop trail wearing hats, gloves, and sunglasses, looking more than a little bit ridiculous. According to the map, it seemed to be about a 3mi trek, but it took us awhile and seemed longer than that. Not that we minded – this ended up being one of the most enjoyable hikes I’ve ever done. It began at a 8000-ft elevation and wasn’t too difficult (but at the same time, wasn’t quite a piece of cake), and everything was just so beautiful. I couldn’t get over the contrast between the bright blue sky, orange rock, white snow, and greenery. We pretty much had the trail to ourselves once we finished the descent into the canyon… though on the way down, we kept running into this foreigner who was hiking alone and kept asking us to take his picture on the trail. Once is fine, twice is ok… but every 5-10 minutes, really? That’s not how we do here in the US of A!
After the hike, we drove to the end of the park road to Rainbow Point (elevation: 9115 ft), but it was SO DAMN COLD that we pretty much ran to the lookout, took a few photos, and ran back to the car. It was pretty similar to where we’d hike, so no biggie.
By late afternoon we were absolutely ravenous for a good meal, and soon found ourselves at Café Adobe in Hatch. I think the selling point was that it was right across the street from an antique store called Mugwumps, which we just HAD to stop at afterwards. We had massive plates of food and our entire bill was only $20, which is pretty absurd. AND it was delicious. Talk about great value!
When we got back to the ranch, we immediately showered and promptly froze our butts off. We had hoped and prayed for the hot tub to be open, but they were doing work on it and preparing to open it the following week. Figures.
