The sun was shining on the sea,
shining with all his might,
but this was very odd you see,
as it was the middle of the night!
Don's two dogs, Candy and Toby, decided that morning starts at 4:30 AM, just as the first light of day is seeping over the ridge of the mountains behind us. Fortunately, we were undisturbed as our two kids continued to snooze until 7:00 AM, then everyone had a nice quiet morning for breakfast and walks.
Around 10:30 AM I took the car off the tow dolly and suggested we should head for Bryce in half an hour. Unfortunately Diane wasn't feeling well so she decided to stay behind with all the kids. So Don, Tina and I piled into the car and headed off for the 48 mile drive to Bryce Canyon.Heading north on Hwy 89 we drove through a beautiful valley with small ranches and communities dotting the landscape until we reached UT-12 and headed up into the hills where we entered Red Rock Canyon with exposed outcroppings of brilliant red rocks and spires. We made several stops in the canyon for pictures of the formations and rock arches we drove through - very cool!
We reached the Bryce Canyon (http://www.nps.gov/brca/index.htm) park entrance and stopped at the visitor center to pick up some information on hikes and pay our entrance fee, then it was back in the car to head for our first stop. About this time Tina said it would be good to get some lunch as she was feeling a little queasy from the elevation. So we went to Ruby's and had a very nice sit down lunch.With lunch taken care of we headed for our first stop at Sunset Point. We parked the car and walked out to the observation point overlooking the Bryce Canyon formation. After taking a lot of pictures (descriptions are useless, you have to see the pictures) we headed down into the canyon along a series of zig-zags (Queens Garden/Navajo Trail) taking photos as we went. Eventually we passed a trail work crew and came out among the trees near the bottom of the canyon where we turned around for the trek back to the top. The trip back took much longer as it was pretty much straight uphill and when you aren't used to breathing and exercising at 8,000 feet you need to stop frequently but eventually we reached the rim of the canyon.
From there we drove to Inspiration Point for more photos then on to Bryce Point and Paria View before our return trip home. The views at each of our stops were absolutely breath taking and between the three of us we managed to take almost 350 pictures which will take a little time to sort out and upload to the web. We are in a limited service area so be patient, it may be a day or two before all our photos are sorted and cleaned up (bad ones and duplicates deleted).We got home around 6:00 PM. Diane was feeling much better. Don BBQ'd some steaks for dinner and Tina made Orzo salad and we had watermelon for desert. After the dinner dishes were cleaned up and put away we played Uno for an hour then called it quits. Tomorrow we drive to Zion.
To see all our photos, click on:
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