(left to right) A view from Rainbow Point, where you can see over 100 miles into New Mexico and Arizona. Black Birch Canyon in Bryce. The faces of Zion's rock mountains.WOW! What a day for Mimi & Papa on Day IV of the Journey.
A brilliant cloudless blue sky and a rather chilly 39-degrees greeted us this morning at the Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel (not as great as it sounds but not too darn bad, really). Our alarm didn't make the grade this morning so we got a bit of a tardy start— since I slept in— and our design to watch sunrise at Sunrise Point at Bryce failed to come to fruition. But, we did get a pretty good start and departed the hotel parking lot at 8:15 am, which is pretty darn good in Mimi-Time!
You would not believe this day we had. The sky was a brilliant blue all day long and the temps began moving up the scale pretty rapidly. We started with jackets and ended with short sleeve shirts and the air condition on in the car. Today, was a full day of site seeing and what we saw was just plain....well.....incredible.
We finished off the pieces of Bryce Canyon we hadn't seen the day before, including catching the Natural Bridge (the hole in the rocks) with the morning sun catching it full tilt. Then we went to the end of the canyon to take in the panoramic views at Black Birch Canyon, Rainbow Point and Yovimpa Point. The latter two are the end of the canyon and the view today was absolutely spectacular. First off, you are 9,300 feet high and at the 18th mile mark of this fabulous canyon. Today we could see beyond 100 miles. The photos do not do it justice because you could see peaks and mountains that are in New Mexico and Arizona and, with the blue sky as a backdrop for the "hoo doos' and this huge canyon made it a picture-perfect viewing day. We stood at the end of Yovimpa Point, all by ourselves on this viewing platform, with this reverent feeling as we looked south into Arizona at some magnificent mountains, valleys and meadows that stretched before us. It was unbelievably inspiring and, I think, really set the tone for the day. These spires (hoo doos) reach from the canyon floor some 2,000 feet and you can't believe what you are seeing. At the top of them, sits these boulders, precariously atop these sandstone rocks. You can see castles and church spires as you look at them and one even looks like a poodle dog—I thought it looked like a duck. You see pinks and reds and rusts and greys and pure white mountains of spires and you just simply can't believe what you are looking at.
We zipped out of Bryce past Ruby's conglomerate commercial development. This Ruby has a hotel, camping ground, RV park, gas station, restaurant, diner, general store, grocery store, bike rentals, ATV rentals, a laundromat, horseback riding stable, fake western town and gift store....all of it in one little complex at the entrance to Bryce Canyon. I think she also owns the Bryce Grand Hotel we stayed at but not sure. Oh yeah, I forgot about the western country show dinner pavilion she has as well. (we skipped the opportunity to see that last night)
Then we headed toward the town of Tropic where Mr. Bryce built a home for he and his wife back in the 20's. We stopped off at Mossy Cave, which is the backside of Bryce Canyon and in addition to a waterfall and cave offers you the opportunity to view these hoo doos and spires from part of the valley floor. It is a totally different perspective viewing these rocks from the ground floor and our walk into the back of the canyon was most inspiring and enjoyable.
I haven't even gotten to Zion. We headed there after a great lunch in Tropic at Clark's restaurant. The Clark family, mormons, were early settlers of the valley, which is rich in agriculture and mixes these red-faced mountains with green pastures that provide an amazing contrast of landscape. The homemade blueberry pie with ice cream that Mimi and I split, was out of this world (hey, we didn't have dinner).
Then came the drive to Zion National Park, south of Bryce on scenic highway 12, which is a beautiful drive through a number of farming valleys and high mountain scenes. As you drive in the east entrance toward Zion, you are overwhelmed with walls of rock mountains that flow right into the edges of the two-lane highway. These rock mountains are incredible sites, thousands and thousands of years old and marked with numerous stryiations and scars of years of weathering and erosion. Photos again don't do these justice. They are mammoth in size and climb some 1,000 feet literally from your car door. Pinion pines and junipers jut out of the rock mountains defying any agricultural rules known to man. They grow sideways from the rocks and you think of glaciers and prehistoric times.
And, you aren't even at the National Park yet. You enter the park and the Visitors Center is 12 miles away. They don't allow car travel so you take shuttles to seven site-seeing stops in the canyon and each stop, as you weave your way around these huge rock walls, just knocks your socks off. We got out at nearly everyone of the stops and viewed these gorgeous mountains on paths and walkways that go part way up the rock mountains. Most of the trails were too severe for Mimi and I but we did trek many of them and saw some spectacular scenery that is not only hard to photograph and but hard to explain.
Let me just say. Put Zion on your "bucket list" as well as Bryce. They are so different but they both make you realize what a beautiful country we live in.
Tomorrow, we drive through the Nevada desert (ugh).
Happy Trails.
No comments:
Post a Comment