Bottoms up! Coming Up from Bryce Canyon

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I am telling this story through the captions of the photos. You can view the slide show, the gallery below, or click on one of the photos to see a larger photo, read the caption and click the arrow to go to the next photo. Good bye to Zion and Bryce Canyon for now!

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We sat on a bench next to this sign, taking a break and trying to decide which way to go “up.” We ate some fruit and protein bars and prepared ourselves for the trip up. We had seen the trail looking down the day before and knew it was time to hike.

This is the view behind us as we sat on the bench eating.

This is the eastern side of the Navajo Loop (our view sitting on the bench) that we did not take.

The trail we took, hiking up now. It was about 4 pm and figured we would be on the top, taking our time at 5 pm, it was just a little over a half of a mile.

I am including photos taken by Jan. All photos that have the time stamp are from Jan’s camera.

Jan is above me on the trail, that’s me just above the date.

Several hikers stopped here because the light kept changing on these hoodoos. The light often changed so quickly our cameras couldn’t catch what we saw.

This is the same scene, just a few seconds later; the light had changed.

The trail “up” is behind me.

Just stopping to take a picture of the red sandstone against the blue sky.

“Balance,” one of my favorite words, and here it is in nature.

In the shadows, but still beautiful

Our trail ahead of us.

Dark clouds, weather changing?

We walked around a corner and were suddenly in a dark cave, our eyes searching up for the light. We didn’t expect a cave, but we were actually inside the hoodoos.

Looking up from this cave-like area.

This is not our path up; it looks like a dry creek bed.

Looking up from the cave.

Looking up

Looking up, trying the capture the immensity of how low we are and how far “up” is this .7 miles?

Our path up – we start with some stairs.

Right after the stairs, we enter another open area with more light above us.

This open area, we are squeezed in between the hoodoos.

Here you can see our path out of this area.

Walking up. From this view you can’t see the width of the switchbacks.

Now we are up a little bit, looking down where we just came. The switch backs begin.

This picture was taken seconds after the previous, looking the other way. If you look closely at the left of the photo where the sky begins against the red you will see a person. Not quite the top but almost the top. That’s where we are headed, doesn’t look too far, though many switchbacks are ahead of us.

Looking down, behind us. We’ve come up a couple of switchbacks.

Looking down.

Switchbacks ahead of us. Steep angle, many people, have to be careful of our steps, some loose dirt, and occasionally quite narrow.

Walking up, being careful.

Looking down.

This is an interesting story. We picked up a conversation with this couple and teased them about being Samson and Delila. He had long hair, so I told him to watch out for any scissors.

This is something I did NOT do, hike with a tripod and my good camera.

Looking down, count the switchbacks.

Walking up, Jan is above me.

Can you see the switchbacks above, looks like three?

Looking up.

Hiking up.

Looking down.

A little “window.”

Jan is above me, look how far I have come up.

That’s me on the left stopping to take a picture of something.

Eye level with the hoodoo.

Looking down.

Finished the switchbacks, looking down.

Eye level, almost at the top.

One more little upward path and we have completed our hike.

We are at the top now, looking down to some birds taking a rest Now it is our turn to rest. What time now, how long did it take us to walk .7 miles? It’s 7 pm – it took us three hours with all our stops, talking to other hikers and taking photos. Boy did we have fun! What an experience walking among the hoodoos!

Hiking Down into Bryce Canyon

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My last couple of posts were about getting up early in the morning and catching the sunrise against the hoodoos of the Bryce Canyon amphitheater and then walking around the amphitheater rim. After walking the rim we had to head back to our motel room and check out. Then we went back into the park and hiked down into the canyon. We entered the canyon about 11 am and came back up at 7 pm. Although we hiked for eight hours, we only walked a little over three miles. It was one of our greatest days, walking at our own pace, taking hundreds of photos, laughing at ourselves and our compulsive shutter-clicking. We were amazed at the beauty, the peace and the calm as we walked among nature’s treasures. Below is a map of our walk, highlighted in yellow.  We parked our car at the Sunset Point, walked along the rim to the Sunrise Point and entered the canyon. We stopped at the Navajo Loop Benchmark for lunch and then began the walk out of the canyon. We went through the Queen’s Garden and I have a close-up of the sign below. And below that is a slide show of a selection of the photos I chose to share our walk down into the canyon from Sunrise Point to the Navajo Loop Benchmark. (If you see a photo with the date stamp, it was taken by Jan.)

Close up of the map and the Queen Victoria Sign:

We parked at Sunset Pt, walked to Sunrise Pt and entered the Canyon. The yellow line showes our path.

Queen Victoria

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Walking around the rim of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater

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I just returned from a three-day trip to eastern Utah, visiting the Canyonlands and Arches National Parks with my friend from college, Jan. Before I share this adventure, let me finish my September vacation at Bryce Canyon.

The last I wrote in the post Sunrise on November 30, 2012, Jan and I had gotten up early to take pictures of the sunrise. After watching God’s colorful paintbrush, we walked around the rim of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater planning our hike down into the canyon.

Enjoy the view (if you want to make the photos larger, just click on one of them):

Sunrise

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Bryce Canyon National Park, September 2012

On the third day of vacation Jan and I had an early morning date with the sunrise at Bryce Point. It was pitch black when we left our motel room, bundled up as only Southern Californian women can be when the mercury dips below 50 degrees. When we arrived there was only a glimmer of light in the eastern sky. In the dim dawning we tiptoed around the crowd that had beat us there and found “our” spot to watch and photograph nature’s awakening. We weren’t disappointed.

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After the sunrise, we walked a couple of miles along the rim again, planning our descent  into the canyon. I will share those photos next time.

Vacation

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I took a mini-vacation the week after Labor Day to Southern Utah. It was everything a vacation should be and I came home brimming with ideas about how to share the experience. But shortly after I returned, I got caught up in the everyday rush of life,  and the enthusiasm waned and the time slipped by and the exciting blog post didn’t get written. However this vacation changed my life.

I took hundreds of photos and have only shared those taken at Zion Canyon National Park. Am I that undisciplined?

No, it is that I do not have the words to adequately express what a wonderful time it was. Since I couldn’t find the words, I kept postponing posting my pictures. Okay, there it is—my true confession—my  feeling of literary inadequacy. So instead, I will just share a few thoughts.

Jan and I – we are at the southern most edge of Bryce Canyon-behind us looking to the north.

I went on this road trip with my friend from college, Jan. We are perfectly compatible vacationing together, no ego tug of war or any type of issues. She makes me laugh, and laugh a lot I did for four days. I completely forgot about all the worries of everyday life, and just enjoyed the beauty around me. The biggest stress we had was making sure we didn’t hit a deer driving at night, or getting to the right place at the right time to catch the sunrise and sunset.

This is how it changed my life: I need more vacations. Vacations where you leave town, see something new, click your camera as much as “you” want and laugh a lot. I enjoyed the time off so much, I realized this had been missing in my life, to the extent that after much contemplation, crunching the numbers and planning, I put in my papers to retire from one of my jobs. This is saying quite a bit from a self-confessed workaholic.

But back to Southern Utah: I shared our time at Zion at in my last blog.  We left Zion at the end of our long day of “hiking the narrows” and traveled east on Highway 9 and then north on Hwy 89 toward Bryce Canyon National Park. It is one of the most beautiful stretches of highways with red rocks, canyons, hoodoos and tunnels I have ever seen. We arrived at our motel room in the dark but all we cared about was a quick dinner and a warm bed, ready to check out Bryce Canyon the next day. We drove into the national park from the north,  following Hwy 63 . “Bryce Canyon, famous for its worldly unique geology, consists of a series of horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters carved from the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The erosional force of frost-wedging and the dissolving power of rainwater have shaped the colorful limestone rock of the Claron Formation into bizarre shapes, including slot canyons, windows, fins, and spires called “hoodoos.” (from http://www.nps.gov/brca/index.htm)

We went all the way without stopping to the farthest southern point. There we began our photographic tour of the rim of the canyon. At each viewpoint we stood among pine trees and walked along the rim looking to the west and the north, sometimes as far as the Grand Canyon, at the beautiful landscape and limestone formations.

The following slide show is of the photos along all our stops of the rim. (just a small selection of the hundreds taken) Next I will post the photos taken in the Bryce amphitheater, and finally our eight-hour hike down into the amphitheater as we walked among the hoodoos.

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