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Published: September 9th 2010
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Cedar Breaks "Amphitheater"
The westerly afternoon sun cast great shadows on the "fins" and "hoodoos". September 3-5: As we emerged from the Extra-Terrestrial Highway, we saw a roadside stand advertising “Extra-Terrestrial Jerky and 100% Honey”. The owners were not there, just dirt. I wonder where THEY went?
At the Visitor Center in Cedar City, Utah, we queried about which way to go first: Bryce National Park or Zion National Park. (Thanks to both Sky and Eliza for suggesting these.) A helpful woman behind the info counter said, “Well, tomorrow's high temperature in Zion is set at 106 degrees and it will be in the 80s at Bryce.” Guess where we chose?
We were also concerned that we were heading into the Labor Day weekend (the last log weekend of summer in the USA) and wondered if the campsites in the parks would be booked out. She suggested we go to Cedar Breaks National Park first—one we'd never heard of. It was closer, smaller and less known, and also higher, at 10,000 ft. Also, the majority of campsites at these parks are not reservable, they're first come-first serve, so as long as we arrived early in the day, we'd have a good chance.
So again, up, up, up we went, and I was thankful
Phil's peak
This is the highest Phil has ever been. Walking around at this altitude left us both a bit breathless, literally. that the van has been so reliable and gutsy, and that the brakes are good (they're new).
The small campground at Cedar Breaks was only partly full, we got a good site, and there were free hot showers in the freshly painted restroom which stood on a little hill in the middle of a profusion of mountain wildflowers. To our surp[rise, though, just the hike up that short path left us both breathless. We later found out that at that altitude we were only getting 60-70%!o(MISSING)f the oxygen we were used to, and we really felt that.
We headed for the lookout and were astonished at the beauty in the late afternoon sun. Check out the pictures.
The night sky was ablaze with stars. We might have stayed longer at Cedar Breaks and done some hikes, but the altitude was just too uncomfortable to us. The next two days and nights we were at Bryce, again, flabbergasted by the views, especially of the Hoodoos, those beautiful towers of rock left as a result of erosion by ice, water and wind.
At Bryce we enjoyed an evening ranger talk about the stars and heard many of
the legends of local Native Americans, all new to us. The Big Dipper, which loomed huge in that vibrant high altitude sky (8,000 ft), is seen as a bear by the local Miwoks (the 4-cornered dipper part) being followed by hunters (the handle), and interestingly is also seen as a bear by the MicMacs in the far eastern province of Nova Scotia and in the state of Maine.
After the talk there were several telescopes set up behind the visitor center with rangers to guide people in seeing different aspects of the night sky. I gasped when I saw my first star cluster, but so many people were interested that the lines were long, and the telescopes, despite good intentions, kept getting nudged off-course. We had some better luck looking through our binoculars back at our campsite. And there we were able to see the three stars which make up the second “star” in the handle of the Big Dipper. It's actually a single star and a star pair next to it. We could make out the smaller and larger light points, but not the two distinct stars of the pair. Those of you reading this in the northern
Layers in time
Each different colored layer tells a story of the past--here at Cedar Breaks it's the relatively (in geologic terms) recent past. hemisphere might like to check this out for yourselves, if you're ever far enough away from the “light pollution” of our electrified nights.
Bryce has a free bus shuttle service, so you can just leave your car and be driven around to the various viewpoints, hopping on and off as you please. There's a more local circuit for the sites near the lodge and campgrounds and twice a day there's a bus trip which is 3 1/2 hours long, taking you to the more far flung sites. That's also free, but you have to book your seats.
Deer roamed through the campsites and there were Utah prairie dogs in the meadows, but the bear watch was reduced to just keeping your food in your hard-sided vehicles, no more steel food safes by your picnic table.
Through an excellent topographic model at the visitor center we learned about the geologic stair steps in this region (aka the Grand Escalante), where the history of the earth's crust is laid bare to the trained eye. From Cedar Breaks, which exposes the rocks of the most recent millennia, the skin of the earth is pulled off. The older and older layers
Delicate pastel colors
Delicate colors--Bonnie G., you should come here! are found as you travel southward, viewing Bryce Canyon, then Zion, then the Pink Cliffs, the White Cliffs, the Vermillion Cliffs and finally the Grand Canyon, where in the bottom the oldest rocks of all are viewable, billions of years old.
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Norma Tracey
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Thank you!
Martha Phil, Thank you for the pleasure this brings. I read everyone and check out the larger photos also on more... Martha there si a Helath Company in USA Illinois called Baxter. They want to help us with the money to do DVD making with our pregnant Aboriginal women. It will come through half way through December so we can start in february 2011. We will have accommodation in a new building int he grounds of Lewisham Hopital. Much love, Norma