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Published: January 7th 2013
Discover the world one wonder at the time...
Well, the year is starting pretty well, and for the first week of 2013, it's more like discover the world, one wonder a day.
We slept last night in Kanab, some 3 hours drive north-east of Las Vegas. Not much to write about Kanab...it's basically two rows of chain hotels, chain fastfood joints...and few petrol stations. We'll found out this week that little town around the border of Arizona and Utah have strictly no interest...we use them to sleep, to get food...and gas for the car.
You come here for the National Parks...and trust me, these places are simply amazing! First on the list this morning, Bryce Canyon National Park. It's a beautiful 2 hours drive north of Kanab. And the luck is already with us...a cute wild big cat just crossed the road right in front of our car...sadly, the camera was not ready...and he was way too fast...but so cute!
You can pay at each park the entry fee, or simply purchase an annual national pass for 80usd....with the amount of parks we are going to visit, the annual
pass is the way to go!
There was not a single cloud in the sky....blue as you cannot imagine....meaning it's also -21c during the night...and a cool -14c during the day! Yeap, that's pretty cold, but it didn't stop us to go for few short wals...just forget about any 5 hours type of walk with this cold and two children..the water would simply freeze right in the bottle!
The best part of Bryce...for the first one hour, we thought the National Park was our own...nobody around...what a place...what a cold place! Later more people joined in the fun, but still, the place was empty.
We went for the Navajo loop walk...well...had we knew the loop is actually closed on the last part, it would have been a little easier....first part down is easy...than we did end-up a little "off-track" before backtracking to safe tracks. It was a good one hour...cold...but impressively beautiful walk...ok, we can call it a trek!
Our next stop of the day was Zion. The park is completely different. There was also more people around...plus hundreds of really not shy elks grazing around. Not really
possible to compare the two parks. My preference goes to Bryce Canyon, but Zion is still an impressive place.
This is being the winter, the sun rise just before 8am...and sunset is just past 5pm. With the drive between each place, this limits slighty the visiting times each day. So sadly for us, no great walk around Zion, we kept it to small walks around. Good news, Zion being way lower at around 2000 meters altitude, it was also slighty...less cold. Bear in mind, Bryce goes up to over 2700 meters!
The day was not over yet...I reached back Kanab just before full darkness....but we still had to drive 75 miles more to reach our night stop in the city of Page. Was happy to finally get there...nice mexican dinner...early night...
Next day...a new adventure...an adventure way more crowded! Coming soon...from Arizona!
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
You are driving through my favorite area of the US...
and the white snow adds such great contrast to the red rocks. Glad to see you are all having fun!