We left last night for Bryce Canyon. The drive took about 2 hours. What surprises me the most about Utah is how green South Utah is. When I thought of Utah I thought it would be desert. Parts of it are, but a big portion of it is a national forest. Bryce Canyon is beautiful. It is full of multi-colored rock foramtions. We took a three mile hike down into the canyon. We were able to hike through some caverns. We then had a picnic lunch in Bryce and went to another hike called the Mossy Cave. Surprise! It leads to [View Full Entry]

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Spent some time at Bryce Canyon today. Nice park. The park is known for its hodoos, which you will see in the photos. The Navajo say that the cayote, who is known as a trickster, turned the people into stones. The park was full of pine trees and had great scents, and the weather was great. Called it quits early today as I didn't stop until late last night. [View Full Entry]

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Another spectacular day. We started out early in the morning about 7 a.m. with a hike up the Emerald Pools trail in Zion - and when I say up I mean up! There are three sets of pools that are formed from runoff from the porous limestone cliffs and you climb like a mountain goat to all three of them. Our reward was being about the only hikers on the trail and then a serene breakfast at the top pool which we had to ourselves. And yes, Lauren, both your father and mother made it up with no problems - how [View Full Entry]

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Hey now....We’ve been cruising around southern Utah for the last several weeks having a great time. The weather has been decent, a little warmer than average. But first, you may have noticed Patty has got the Jamie Lee Curtis hair thing going on. She said before the trip that she wanted to go “natural”, stop coloring her hair so she cut it all off…says it’s a lot easier to take care of… I kind of like it. Anyway, after Arches, we drove a couple of hours over to Capital Reef NP and stayed 5 days. A much less visited park…we had [View Full Entry]

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Bryce Canyon Drove to Bryce canyon early this morning; words cannot describe it. Green flora backgrounded by red rock and blue sky, it was immense and indescribable. I think my favorite picture is of the Hoodoos, but the huge erratic and staircase turned out quite well, too. We took Queen's Garden trail to the Northern part of the Navajo Loop. The hike out kicked both our butts; gorgeous day, amazing scenery. We were starving when we returned to St. George, and went to the Brazilian grill. Too much wine, and lots of great conversations followed. I am sleepy, and it is [View Full Entry]

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We started our day with food, of course. We stayed at Bryce View Lodge, a motel, owned by Ruby's Inn Best Western located across the street. It seemed as though we crossed the road to the civilization. The motel had, well, a place for you to sleep while the Inn had pretty much what a tourist would want. The biggest disappointment for us at Bryce is availability of good food. The hotel served standard American food either buffet style or regular style; I don't get it. Serving basic American breakfast is not in any way bad, but managing to make basic [View Full Entry]

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12th May, 2009 Bryce Canyon Left Zion NP today headed for Bryce National Park. Steep Climb out of Zion Canyon and through two tunnels, the first 1.1 miles long and only able to fit a large vechile through by shutting off one end and then driving down the middle - yep that was us and we paid $15 for the privilige. Quite breath taking. On this winding steep road we came around a corner and everyone was stopped all over the place taking photos of a herd of Big Horn Sheep on a steep cliff. Then off through Mt Carmel, Hatch, [View Full Entry]

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Paul slept in this morning but he felt much better. He actually had a really great day. Hopefully whatever bothered his body yesterday was just a fluke and we'll be good to go for the rest of the trip! After eating breakfast in our room, we checked out of the hotel and spent the morning exploring Zion Canyon. Since cars are not allowed in the park (unless you stay at the lodge, then you can park there only), we took the bus system up to the North end of the canyon. We enjoyed visiting the bus stops to see the beautiful [View Full Entry]

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Up at 8am on the dot and showered ready - hopefully - for our ride. Karina rang the office at 8:45 to book the 1/2 day morning ride. They were only running afternoon rides and told us just to turn up at 12:30pm for the 1pm ride. After a couple of breakfast bars and an orange juice for breakfast the first order of business was seeing about getting the slow leak in the tyre fixed. We suspected it had been flat since we hired it, as the handbrake warning light had always been on - until the tyre was flat enough [View Full Entry]

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We enjoyed a lazy morning before heading out for Bryce Canyon. It was a beautiful sunny day, warmer than yesterday, and we were all excited about seeing Bryce. We stopped at the visitor center in Red Rock Canyon, which is really your first hint of hoodoos, but in bright red. Then through two small tunnels cut through the red rocks and on to the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park. We had seen post cards and pictures of Bryce with snow, but to actually see it was overwhelming. The colors were so bright and the contrast of the snow, the green [View Full Entry]

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