Day 4 - Zion to Bryce Canyon National Park

Monday, May 7, 2018

Weather:  Cloudy and cool in the morning (56 degrees at 7 a.m.) but 86 degrees by noon!  It’s crazy how much the temperature swings around here, and then naturally the sun came out at 2:00 just as we were hiking up the side of a frickin’ mountain!

Steps: Shaun: 19,472, Shannon: 16,971

We got up early at 6:30, packed the car, and left the Novel House.  We stopped at Oscar’s again for breakfast (and some nummy guacamole to go), got ice, and headed out to Zion National Park.  We were in the parking lot by 8:10, which was great because the parking lot had filled up by the time we dropped our loot off from the Visitor’s Center.  The alternative to parking in the lot was to take a shuttle from downtown Springdale, which would have sucked, so we were glad that we’d been warned ahead of time.  Thanks, Ciaran!

We rode the “inside the park shuttle” to the end of the line, which was called the Temple of Sinewava. We hiked 2 miles round trip alongside the river to a place called the Narrows, which is the start of a much longer, wetter trip that we had no intention of doing.  The river road walk was beautiful though, and there was a section where water was seeping out of the rocks with pretty wildflowers growing out of them.  We loved it, but we had to pee really bad on the return trip, so we were pretty uncomfortable, but we were bound and determined not to get dehydrated on this trip.  Not only were we drinking a lot, but we also took electrolyte pills every half hour or so.  Bottom line was that a pit toilet never looked so good!

On a side note, the most famous hike at Zion is called Angel’s Landing, which involves scaling a giant rock formation.  While checking out the crazies in the sky, we kept seeing soaring black birds and hoped they were California Condors (which was Shaun’s single biggest goal to see for this trip).  Alas, we ran into a ranger and asked him what these birds were, and he said they were turkey vultures. Sigh.

Once we got done with our first hike, we ate a banana and some nuts to fortify ourselves for the next hike and made friends with a squirrel who patted Shannon on the back.  It was very cute.

Hike #2 was to a place called Weeping Rocks, which was advertised as an easy hike.  It was short for sure, but it was pretty steep, which made it more challenging than we were expecting.  Shaun didn’t use her poles on the ascent (which was a mistake), but she did use them on the descent, which helped her knees that were tweaking a little bit.  The weeping rocks were really pretty with cool plants growing out from under a ledge where water dripped from the ceiling.  There was quite a bit of plant-oriented signage on this trail that helped us learn about the local flora and fauna (which we loved).

Once we climbed back down the mountain, we rode the shuttle bus to the Grotto where we used an emergency blanket to lay out our spread of peanut butter and banana sandwiches and Oscar’s heavenly guacamole.  For dessert we ate strawberries and seriously melted Oreos that were pretty gnarly, but we ate them anyway!  The cottonwood trees were spewing their fibers all over the place, but we managed to dodge them (for the most part) and kept from sneezing all over our food.

Our final hike of the day took us from the Grotto to the Emerald Pools.  We had been told we’d be able to see all the pools using the Grotto trail, but we were misinformed.  Another aspect working against us was that the clouds had cleared up while we were at lunch, so we were hiking in the blazing ass sun.  The third issue was that this trail was up the side of the mountain (despite being listed as easy— these trail raters in Zion are completely nuts!).  The trip to the Lower Emerald Pool was almost totally uphill in loose sand embedded with random boulders, and  neither one of us used our poles, which was another big mistake.  While the pool had a few waterfalls dripping down (which were beautiful), the pool was nothing special because the water level was so low. This made the effort in the heat disappointing.  Luckily, we had reapplied our sunscreen, had on our hats, and plenty of water, so we were good.

The way down from Lower Emerald Pool was much easier, shady, and paved, which was good because Shaun was WAY out of steam.  On the trail going back down the mountain, we met a couple on the trail where the woman was on crutches, for heaven’s sake!  Shaun gave the woman major kudos, her boyfriend called her a badass (which was totally true), and she gave both Shaun and Shannon a new perspective on their tiredness.  This turned out to be a reoccurring lesson as we met young families where babies were being carried in backpacks down into canyons and older folks were using canes and on oxygen but they were doing it!  It as very inspiring for both of us.

not our image of the Court of the Patriarchs

Once we made it back to Zion Lodge, we got a drink and then hopped onto the majorly packed shuttle bus.  We decided not to pass go and not collect $200 or stop to see the Court of the Patriarchs.  Oh well.  We saw them driving by and got the postcard.

 We left Zion for Bryce via the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway. We saw the Great Arch, which is visible directly from the highway. It is a blind arch, i.e. not yet freestanding, so it really shows the process of erosion that creates all the famous arches in the area. Further on, we went through the tunnels that were built in the 1920s with cars, rather than larger vehicles, in mind. We had to wait while oncoming traffic, including motorhomes, buses, and trailers, went through, and then our side could go through the other direction.

Before leaving the park, we stopped to view Checkerboard Mesa, and we saw a gorgeous blue bird, perhaps a Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay, in and around the pinyon trees. We managed to get some really good shots of him(?) before continuing on our way out of Zion, heading towards Bryce.

The drive to the Bryce Canyon Inn was about 1 ½ hours, and we were fascinated by how different the landscape became the further we went. We drove through Red Canyon and the Dixie National Forest, which offered our first view of the hoodoos and beehives for which the area is most famous.

We saw quite a bit of new wildlife as well, including our first bald eagle of the trip, bison, pronghorns (without their horns), and more turkeys. The most exciting sighting was Shan’s close encounter with a bighorn sheep. We pulled over at an overlook because there were a bunch of people stopped taking pictures. They were aimed toward the rock wall across the road, so we moved to higher ground to get a better look. And lo! There was a bighorn sheep on that side of the road too! The main group was on the wall, but this straggler was right there! It eventually joined the rest of the group by walking across the road right in front of an oncoming car. It couldn’t have cared less.

We arrived at the Bryce Canyon Inn at about 7:30 pm, exhausted from our long day, but also starving. There weren’t a lot of vegan-friendly options in Tropic, UT (there weren’t a lot of options in general), so we ended up going next door to the combination general store/gas station/restaurant called Charlie’s, where Shaun got pasta and Shan oohed and aahed over Grandma’s Five-fruit Pie (a la mode, of course). After dinner, we returned to the hotel and collapsed.

Day 3 - Zion National Park

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Weather:  Cloudy and windy in the a.m. but cleared up and ended up at 75 pleasant degrees in the afternoon

Steps: Shaun: 11,247, Shannon: 7,406 (which caused us to continue to question Shaun’s Fitbit)

The Novel House was an inn so they didn’t serve food, but they gave us breakfast vouchers for a couple of the local restaurants. We showered and headed out to Oscar’s where we had a wonderful breakfast that included the best guacamole on the planet (it was on Shaun’s breakfast burrito that they made vegan special for her).

After breakfast, we walked back to Novel House and set up the car for our next adventure.  It was here that we discovered that our laptop and Kindles that we had put into a dry bag and then into the cooler to protect them from the intense heat of the previous day were under water and that the dry bag had NOT stayed dry.  All three of our electronics were under water!

There wasn’t a whole lot we could do on a Sunday in the little tourist town of Springdale, Utah, so we took everything out of their cases, laid them on a towel in the back of the car to dry out and did what any self-respecting person would do in this situation...we went shopping! There were all kinds of artsy fartsy shops, a Visitor’s Center, and a cool natural grocery store where we bought lunch and ate it outside on the patio.  We also bought brambleberry jam (which is a local specialty and very nummy), and Shannon bought “May the Forest be with You” PJ pants with forest animals done up like Star Wars characters, which just proves how much of a geek she is.

After we finished shopping, we drove the road that paralleled Zion National Park to see the surrounding area.  We decided to wait to go into the park until the next day since you can only get around on a shuttle.  The road outside the park was called the Kolob Terrace Road, and we drove it until it ended (at a very uninspiring reservoir) and then came back down it.

Unfortunately, we missed seeing the sunset on the rocks, but it was still beautiful and gave us a great introduction to the geology of the area and a southeastern view of Zion Canyon from the edge of the great Colorado Plateau.  We also saw some kind of a raptor near a place called Lava Point, but we didn’t see it well enough to grant a point for it.  It was still a great spotting by Shannon, the Eagle-Eyed Wonder.  To top off the day, we had to tinkle behind a couple of bushes at a closed campground because we couldn’t find an open place to pee.  Oh well, it wouldn’t be a true vacation without Shaun and Shannon dropping trow in an inappropriate place!

 During the drive back to the Novel House we saw a ton of mule deer, a lone turkey and then, later, a couple of rafters of turkeys (I had to look that one up!).  Shannon saw a roadrunner, and then Shaun spotted a lovely group of elk with males with velvet still on their antlers and winter coats molting.  They were pretty far away and it was getting dark, so our pictures aren’t that great, but it was still a cool sighting.  We also had a couple of incidents of cow escapees, and this trend would continue through the whole trip.  Apparently, most areas in this part of the country are open ranges where cows roam freely, and they really like to forage on the side of road where the grass is nicer due to the rain runoff.

Right outside of Springdale, Shaun saw a peregrine falcon, but she couldn’t figure out how to put up the frickin’ flash on her new camera, so no picture was taken.  Luckily, Shannon saw him too, so he was a verified point. This came right after Shannon shockingly saw four...wait for it….ostriches….yes, ostriches, for heaven’s sake, so she got a point for them as well, even though they weren’t on the list because...they were ostriches!  One of them was rubbing her/his head in the dirt (maybe it was trying to bury its head in the sand….harharharhar!).

We ate at a TexMex place called Bit and Spur that had really good root beer but nothing for Shaun to eat.  Oh well.  You can’t win them all!  Back at the Novel House, we settled up the bill with Ciaran, and he gave Shannon his copy of Jane Eyre.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  We also uploaded our pictures onto the Surface (which did power up), but you could see water behind the screen, so we aren’t holding out much hope for it.  Our Kindles are fine, though, so we’re very glad about that.  We’ll buy some silica gel and put the Surface in it to dry it out the best we can and then see what happens.  Wish us luck!