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Hi Everyone,
I know I have been updating this journal every day (hopefully you're not getting sick of reading them) but everyday there is just something so beautiful. Yesterday we spent the day in Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park. They are both in southern utah about 30 minutes from each other so we spent half a day in each. Bryce Canyon was so much more beautiful than I thought. The Canyon was so vast and colorful. The rocks were bright orange, red, yellow, with a backdrop of lush green trees and snow capped mountains.
Our first stop was the Bryce Amphithreatre that included Inspiration, Sunset, and Sunrise Point. While we were there a thunder and lighting storm was off in the distance. YOu could actually see the lighting strikes down into the canyon. It was so picturesque. We did a little hike around the rim of the canyon and then headed off further into the park. later on down the road there was a view point of the Natural Bridge. It reminded me a little of arches but just much bigger. It was beautfiul and it really brings home the power of nature. I really enjoyed
the park but since it is a smaller park, we only spent half a day there. There are only so many overviews you can see!
So off we headed to Zion National Park. I thought that it would look familiar since they are so close to each other but the park are actually quite different. Zion is mountains and plateaus everywhere. The pictures do not do it justice. You really have to be there and see the 360 degree views, they are breathtaking. The rocks are so red and the moutains are so tall, about 11,000 feet. It was crazy to see these huge rocks with barren desert land around it but on the mountains themselves there would be be random trees coming out of the side of the mountain. In Zion there is a mile long tunnel that passes through an entire mountain. Only one lane of traffic is allowed through at one and time and it is very dark inside. But they have three different windows in the tunnel then provide some amazing views to the mountainside. It was pretty cool.
Our original plan was to head to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon because
we thought that it was so close but the Park Rangers at Zion told us it was more than double the distance we thought it was. Unfortunealty we decided to scrape it because it would have been a haul and since it wasn't the south rim (which is more popular and pictersque) we didn't feel like we could fit it in. This way we can add more days later maybe in Oregon or Washington. I feel like we made a good decision, this way we can have more down time and not always be in a hurry. After Zion we were pretty tired so we decided to head out and make camp for the night. It was an experience all in itself.
Last night we had our first scary experience in a campgroud, well it wasn't that bad but I now know that I am a big scareddy cat. First off there were about a billion bugs everywhere, mosquitos, caterpillars, freaky looking spiders. The insect repellant had no effect, it was like we were feeding them dinner all night. As I was siting at the picnic table uploading my pictures I just happened to look behind me and there
was a pretty large animal behind me. Since it was pretty dark and our fire had already died out, I couldn't quite make out what it was. So of course I freaked out and Jen shined the flashlight on it and it was a very large scarry looking raccoon staring at us. Of course being the tough, wilderness women were are, we immediately jumped up on the table! It was a sight. Well we shooed it and told it to scram and it did unitl about 5 minutes later when it was back with it's little friends. We packed up all our food and trash but somehow they were still finding stuff from other people's sites. This time we were not able to get them back into the woods so i retreated to the tent and left Jen to fend for herself. I was not going to get rabies! We kept shining the flashilight into the woods all night and all we could see was little beaty eyes looking out at us. There was a whole colony living behind our tent. Throughout the whole night we kept getting woken up by raccoons fighting with each other and I could have
sworn I heard one scratching at our tent. It was terrifying!! Wildlife is great as long as it is not right outside your tent. But we did survive and there was no rabies transmission. So we are off to Salt Lake City for the day.
I hope all is well back home and Take Care.
Love Laura
Ps- Don't forget to leave comments! I know it annoying but it's my only link to home-cut me some slack!
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Jeniqua
non-member comment
Yo, Yo, Yo. Looks like some straight thuggin in the Bryceshizzle. Keep on the DL with those fa'shanimals or else they may eat yo grub. Out, Jeniqua