Hoodoos and more

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11th June

We crossed the border into Utah and carried on driving through some spectacular scenery. Many of the areas we have been through and are still to visit, are part of the National Parks or sometimes National Monuments and are so accommodating to visitors, there is usually a visitor centre with helpful staff, loads of info, displays and leaflets plus the all important restrooms which are always spotless. This morning we travelled through Grand Staircase-Escalante which must get the prize for the daftest name. It is a vast landscape with a mix of flat land and colourful mountains running for miles and was the last place in USA to be mapped. It covers 1.9 million acres which must be the size of a good proportion of England!



We drove on with a stop for a snack at a lovely old colonial style restaurant in Knab and a short stop on the other side of town in a parking lot which turned out to be a public shooting range, we couldn't believe it, people were turning up, getting their guns and rifles out of the car and firing at targets 100 yards away and then off about their business...... Scary.



The scenery was constantly changing and always fantastic. The weather for us was ok, but all around us the skies got darker and we could see huge torrents of rain pouring out of the sky and lightening cracking in the dark skies. We stopped to take some photos and one side, the sky was dark and stormy and the other side was bright and sunny.



We arrived at Bryce Canyon, staying at Ruby's Inn which is a huge complex started 100 years ago by a chap called Rubens, catering for a few visitors coming to the area. Now, it is a massive place with hotel, apartments, cabins, camping, their style of caravan/motorhome which they call RV's. They have a cowboy show which we decided to go to with low expectations but in fact it was ok, a good country music band with a bit of Rawhide and Bonanza theme tunes, what can go wrong! Food was okish though Jane being a veggie was not getting the widest choice, in fact most restaurants find it hard to believe that somebody does not want to tuck into a big juicy steak. Usually she has done ok but,here it was dreadful as in place of steak, chicken or salmon, she got half a portobello mushroom, not even a whole one. We sat with a great couple from Germany who had been brought up under the East German regime and now had a bit of money to fulfil their dreams and top of the list was to ride Harley's in America and they were having a ball. Riding big shiny Harley's is really popular here, we have probably seen 100's, many are locals but others have hired them for their holiday, what we also keep seeing is a trike type bike, looks like a Harley, some of them are Harley's but they look great fun and amazingly comfortable, some tow a little matching luggage holder. We got talking to a lady the following day who was with her husband touring this area on their trike but she also had a little dog that she had in a bag she wore around her neck, what made it funny was the dog wore pink goggles - only in America.



12th June

Col and I had been to Bryce Canyon before and knew we were in for a treat today and we weren't disappointed, it is quite different to Grand Canyon, smaller but in our view just as, or maybe more spectacular. We drove the full scenic route and took a couple of hundred photos at least. The sun was shining and the sky really blue which made it even more magnificent. Bryce is known for its hoodoos which are pillars of rock, sometimes in clusters which have been left standing from the forces of erosion, a forest of stone could be a description for this amazing area, but photos don't do it justice, it really is a magical place.



13th June

We drove down to Red Canyon and had a wander around in this very rusty red landscape, with odd shape rocks balanced on the top of the mountains. It is strange how the landscape changes so fast at one point to the right the view was completely red rock and to the other completely green landscape. The desert is extraordinarily green at the moment because of the unusual amount of rain they have had, much of the desert is dotted with small green bushes but also lots of tiny, pretty colourful flowers which a lady in one of the national park visitors centre told us were a rare sight at anytime of year but particularly now and to see so much greenery was really unusual.



We had coffee in the Galaxy in a place called Hatch which was a great cafe, decorated as though it came straight from 1950 with an old unused petrol station now housing an old fire engine. The owner of Galaxy had the most gravelly voice ever and was very welcoming. We continued with various stops and a visit to a great fabric shop in Cedar City and a stop by a pretty lake in an area called Cedar Mountains. The area had patches of dark brown that we couldn't work out if it was rock or great clods of mud, however, it turned out to be basalt from lava flows from thousands of years ago. We carried on to Springdale which is on the edge of Zion National Park, we passed through a town called Hurricane, pretty standard town for this area, wide road lined with all the usual businesses but one was interesting, it was a Pawn shop, it actually said family pawn shop and had a drive through you could use to buy or sell, the mind boggles!



14th June

Springdale was a nice little town with lots of different restaurants and a few shops. It gave us easy access to Zion and its bus shuttle service that took you to various points in the parks. To really see the park you need to be geared up and take one of the trails, many of which were classified as strenuous (we saw two guys hanging off ropes on the sheer face of one of the rocks - that must have been one up from strenuous and classified as mad!). We took one of the easy trails that led to a waterfall and you could walk behind the water.... Sounds good but a bit disappointing as when we got there, there wasn't much water, though the fact there is any water is amazing in a desert. Another feature is The Narrows which is a trek through the water that runs between narrow gaps of the rocks, however for this you would be wading through water and they recommended taking coats, food and a couple of gallons of water!! As the temperature was a blistering 102, that wasn't on our itinerary either but we did go and stand in the cool water for a paddle to cool down. The heat really was hard to deal with so mid afternoon, we returned to the car and it's very good aircon and took a route through the park which gave fantastic views of these colourful mountains which were more impressive from this view than being up close inside the park. We made loads of photo stops as usual but the two best ones were at Checkerboard Mesa, the patterns in the rock forming a squared pattern and a second place where 3 mountain goats or probably more likely sheep were posing for the people who had stopped to photograph them.



15th June

Longish journey today to Moab, we had to retrace our steps to Cedar City and stopped for a great breakfast in a quirky restaurant and a short walk revealed more to Cedar City than you would first assume and more than we had time to look at. Much of our journey was on interstates but the view changed constantly, the roads were generally lined with rock and its shape, form, colour changed all the time, one moment it would be deep red, then cream then terracotta, and all sorts of shapes but we could see shapes within the rock, faces and animals mainly. The interstate was very quiet even though it is the start of school holidays here, nevertheless, we saw two accidents, one had happened earlier where a truck had left the road and was on its side down a small embankment, there were a lot of people trying to work out how to get it out, the other was a car that had ended up in a large gulley in the middle of the road and we think he may have slid in snow, yes, snow! We had just left 100 degrees and within a couple of hours, the temp. had dropped by more than 30 degrees, we had some rain followed by hail and there looked like snow on the road, this poor chap must have found it and slid off.



We called into a place called Green River which the guide book mentioned as being popular for sports with a view of the river. We found a nice cafe for a wonderful ice cream which overlooked the river,which was a brown torrent of water rushing by, probably due to the amount of rain. This cafe turned out to be the only decent place in town, it was a bit like a deserted film set. A huge wide road with one truck and us. Most of the buildings had seen better days and many were closed down buildings, there were several old style motels that were not places I would choose to stay in and all looked a bit creepy!



Moab was our destination to visit Arches National Park, the town was interesting with lots of little shops selling different stuff rather than the tourist tut we have been seeing, one in particular sold all sorts of things made from recycled goods. We found a restaurant / brewery which was very good.



16th June

We decided to get to Arches for sunrise so left our hotel at 5am but well worth it. The park is known for its sandstone spires, arches, balanced stones and fins and is wonderful. It originally sat on a bed of salt millions of years ago and the effect of wind, rain and erosion have shifted the rocks leaving all these amazing arches, holes and balanced rocks.



By 1pm we were wilting and the temperature was climbing so back to the hotel for a snooze and a swim before attacking the supermarket to pick up some picnic stuff and back to the park to watch the sun go down and we were rewarded with a great sunset.

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Comments

[Monica]

Howdee!
thanks Sall, loving your blog, keep it comin!

[L & T]

What a holiday
You are going to need a holiday when you get back to get over this one! Carry on enjoying yourselves, look forward to the next instalment.