Zion, Bryce and Grand Canyon: Saturday
Jul. 8th, 2003 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikSaturday was the day we actually Saw Stuff. This is what the trip was about.
8am's shaft of sunlight mixed with a slight altitude-induced headache woke me up. I got up, showered, saw Revs was still zoned out and went back to bed another hour. We both got out of there just in time to miss the 10:30am breakfast cut-off at the lodge. We re-loaded the E, checked out and headed down the path into the park. If you check the map to your right, you'll see the park as the small southbound line just below Bryce Lodge.
I last saw Bryce Canyon from the tiny windows of a pickup-bed camper truck on our move from El Granada, CA to California, MO, back in early 3rd grade. We were driven out of there by huge puffballs of falling mountain snow. My memory placed it as an insanely deep chasm with tall, balancing rocks much like the ones seen on Coyote/Roadrunner Looneytunes. Getting to the first vista at Inspiration Point showed me my memory wasn't far off.
While some of the cliffs you get to perch on are seriously way up there they have walkpaths down them that are very accessable. Trails wound down from the vistas all the way to the valley floor and back up, circling pillars and arches throughout the edging. Between the altitude and the sheer vertical nature of some of the trails you'd have to be in excellent shape for most of them, so we stuck to the vistas. Maybe if we'd had a few days to acclimate to the altitude we'd have given them a try, but not on a short weekender like this.
Sudden tourism flowed down the park's length as the bulk of the bad-hat-and-loud-T-shirt crowd was thrown out of the now-closed breakfast buffets. We were just ahead of crest: getting great views and easy parking, fleeing just before the wave of tourists crashed into each site. In our rearview mirror I could see swaying busloads of foreigners and overstuffed minivans of grandparents-and-grandkids splashing out along the vistas like foam surging up on the beach. Note to anybody going to these sites on a holiday: Get up early and get moving, lest you drown in the surf.
We were back at the lodge in time for their lunch opening. Laptops on the table, pictures downloading, we had ourselves a very wonderful and amazingly affordable lunch, considering where we were. Of all the Xanterra lodges I've been in (the others being Grand Canyon, yet to come, and my previous time in Furnace Creek) this one had the best food and best prices. Fussing around with the maps a bit convinced us we could go back to see Zion in the daylight and still make it to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon before sundown. This should leave us with enough energy to head back towards Hurricane, St. George or Vegas (if we push it) to find lodging.
The Element proved to be a wonderful long-range roadtrip car, now that I'm used to the ergos on it. Everything tossed in the back atop the futon mattress and was easy to get to. All the use-in-motion items fit in the dash-cubbies and bins. We had GPS, radar, power for the phones and power for the laptops without anything getting in the way. It was exceptional fast-and-easy to get in and out of as well as loading and unloading at stops. The waterproof/stainproof interior did very well with the dust, dirt and Revar-induced liberal spraying of grapefruit soda when one can went nuclear upon activation. :) Music was constantly available: We had a cluster of XM-satellite stations we swapped between depending on mood and the entire house's MP3 collection on the iPod in the dash. The engine never complained once even when we did hard-grades going up over 9000ft and never got above 50% on the thermometer even when grinding through stop-and-go traffic in 115 degree heat, air-con on full blast. I am seriously impressed with Honda. This saved us later on Sunday.
The route returning to Zion was absolutely lovely! We had no idea how much we'd missed in our late-night run to the lodge. We kept stopping along the road to get pictures of the cliffs and colors that surrounded the road. As I was doing 90% of the driving this trip, Revar has most of the in-motion pictures. Check ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
revar's journal later on for those, hopefully. I got a few when things were nice enough we just had to wander around on the roadside. We finally made it back into Zion, gladly showing the National Parks pass: don't pay $20, proceed directly to Go and enjoy. I've gotten about $250 of use out of this $50 pass so far. If you're going to any of the national parks, get one. Seriously.
The fireworks may have been grand -- but I definately prefer Zion during the day.
It's always hard to believe that a simple river -- a tiny one, at that! -- carved places like this. The lines of the rock were twisted, warped and then re-smoothed, making for checkerboard and swirl patterns going thousands of feet high. One part of the road through the park is a 1.1 mile tunnel bored through solid rock, with little 'hatches' that let in needed light and ventilation. We spotted a few of those way up on the cliff face once we were down in the park. Those pictures and many others are scattered around in this trip's imageserver page. We could have spent all day there, riding the shuttle to the hard-to-reach parts, but only ended up staying about 45 minutes so we could return to our Grand-Canyon-bound route. This is on my definitive "places to return to and See Properly" list... most likely on my big September motorcycle ride.
From here we trailed down through Kaibab and other strangely named-and-numbered Utah towns until we hit the welcome freedom of Arizona. The bottom border of Utah is rimmed with huge mesas, making Arizona look incredibly flat by comparison. When we passed the pink sand-dunes (aah, so THAT's where they got the idea for that 'southwestern pink' color seen in architecture all over the deserts) we stopped and filled a bottle with the intriguingly colored sand. I've been trying to find better sand for my little charcoal incense burner and this fit the bill perfectly. From there we droned down the flats of Highway 89A while Revar tried to nap a little bit. Some 80 miles later we were in the Kaibab national forest, rising back up over 8000ft as we hit Jasper Lake and started south into the Grand Canyon's national park area.
Racing the sun to Cape Royal was a bit of a challenge, but I managed to keep it tame enough that not only did the park rangers not want to chase me down, Revar was able to get in some good napping time. We got to the rim just in time for sunset.
We didn't get to see much before the sky went dark, making picture-taking a challenge. Poor Revar had a software error on the mac, making it dump/delete all the 'raw format' images taken that evening, ending up with only one picture. I got a few more, but most were washed out by the oncoming mists of evening filling the valley floor. By the time we got back to the lodge it was pitch black. Once again, we were quite tired and now about 500 feet higher than we were at the Bryce lodge. We got our names in for dinner and sat down with our maps and laptops to figure out what to do next.
We were too tired to really be effective drivers, doubly so with the sheer number of deer that had been hopping into my headlights on the way to the lodge. A quick check got us the very last room available at the Grand Canyon lodge -- a separate cabin just like we had at Bryce. It was cheaper, too! The dinner more than balanced that out, however, proving to be the most expensive and least enjoyable of any of the trip. :/ With the parking notably off from where the cabins were I happily took advantage of the porter service and their little electric-carts, giving the fellow a good tip for his effort. We got a huge cabin, strangely enough -- four beds! Revar took one half of the cabin and I got the other, so for a change my whines-at-altitude CPAP machine wouldn't disturb his sleep. We finally crashed out just after midnight, once more sleeping like dead timber.
8am's shaft of sunlight mixed with a slight altitude-induced headache woke me up. I got up, showered, saw Revs was still zoned out and went back to bed another hour. We both got out of there just in time to miss the 10:30am breakfast cut-off at the lodge. We re-loaded the E, checked out and headed down the path into the park. If you check the map to your right, you'll see the park as the small southbound line just below Bryce Lodge.
I last saw Bryce Canyon from the tiny windows of a pickup-bed camper truck on our move from El Granada, CA to California, MO, back in early 3rd grade. We were driven out of there by huge puffballs of falling mountain snow. My memory placed it as an insanely deep chasm with tall, balancing rocks much like the ones seen on Coyote/Roadrunner Looneytunes. Getting to the first vista at Inspiration Point showed me my memory wasn't far off.
While some of the cliffs you get to perch on are seriously way up there they have walkpaths down them that are very accessable. Trails wound down from the vistas all the way to the valley floor and back up, circling pillars and arches throughout the edging. Between the altitude and the sheer vertical nature of some of the trails you'd have to be in excellent shape for most of them, so we stuck to the vistas. Maybe if we'd had a few days to acclimate to the altitude we'd have given them a try, but not on a short weekender like this.
Sudden tourism flowed down the park's length as the bulk of the bad-hat-and-loud-T-shirt crowd was thrown out of the now-closed breakfast buffets. We were just ahead of crest: getting great views and easy parking, fleeing just before the wave of tourists crashed into each site. In our rearview mirror I could see swaying busloads of foreigners and overstuffed minivans of grandparents-and-grandkids splashing out along the vistas like foam surging up on the beach. Note to anybody going to these sites on a holiday: Get up early and get moving, lest you drown in the surf.
We were back at the lodge in time for their lunch opening. Laptops on the table, pictures downloading, we had ourselves a very wonderful and amazingly affordable lunch, considering where we were. Of all the Xanterra lodges I've been in (the others being Grand Canyon, yet to come, and my previous time in Furnace Creek) this one had the best food and best prices. Fussing around with the maps a bit convinced us we could go back to see Zion in the daylight and still make it to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon before sundown. This should leave us with enough energy to head back towards Hurricane, St. George or Vegas (if we push it) to find lodging.
The Element proved to be a wonderful long-range roadtrip car, now that I'm used to the ergos on it. Everything tossed in the back atop the futon mattress and was easy to get to. All the use-in-motion items fit in the dash-cubbies and bins. We had GPS, radar, power for the phones and power for the laptops without anything getting in the way. It was exceptional fast-and-easy to get in and out of as well as loading and unloading at stops. The waterproof/stainproof interior did very well with the dust, dirt and Revar-induced liberal spraying of grapefruit soda when one can went nuclear upon activation. :) Music was constantly available: We had a cluster of XM-satellite stations we swapped between depending on mood and the entire house's MP3 collection on the iPod in the dash. The engine never complained once even when we did hard-grades going up over 9000ft and never got above 50% on the thermometer even when grinding through stop-and-go traffic in 115 degree heat, air-con on full blast. I am seriously impressed with Honda. This saved us later on Sunday.The route returning to Zion was absolutely lovely! We had no idea how much we'd missed in our late-night run to the lodge. We kept stopping along the road to get pictures of the cliffs and colors that surrounded the road. As I was doing 90% of the driving this trip, Revar has most of the in-motion pictures. Check revar's journal later on for those, hopefully. I got a few when things were nice enough we just had to wander around on the roadside. We finally made it back into Zion, gladly showing the National Parks pass: don't pay $20, proceed directly to Go and enjoy. I've gotten about $250 of use out of this $50 pass so far. If you're going to any of the national parks, get one. Seriously. The fireworks may have been grand -- but I definately prefer Zion during the day.
It's always hard to believe that a simple river -- a tiny one, at that! -- carved places like this. The lines of the rock were twisted, warped and then re-smoothed, making for checkerboard and swirl patterns going thousands of feet high. One part of the road through the park is a 1.1 mile tunnel bored through solid rock, with little 'hatches' that let in needed light and ventilation. We spotted a few of those way up on the cliff face once we were down in the park. Those pictures and many others are scattered around in this trip's imageserver page. We could have spent all day there, riding the shuttle to the hard-to-reach parts, but only ended up staying about 45 minutes so we could return to our Grand-Canyon-bound route. This is on my definitive "places to return to and See Properly" list... most likely on my big September motorcycle ride.
From here we trailed down through Kaibab and other strangely named-and-numbered Utah towns until we hit the welcome freedom of Arizona. The bottom border of Utah is rimmed with huge mesas, making Arizona look incredibly flat by comparison. When we passed the pink sand-dunes (aah, so THAT's where they got the idea for that 'southwestern pink' color seen in architecture all over the deserts) we stopped and filled a bottle with the intriguingly colored sand. I've been trying to find better sand for my little charcoal incense burner and this fit the bill perfectly. From there we droned down the flats of Highway 89A while Revar tried to nap a little bit. Some 80 miles later we were in the Kaibab national forest, rising back up over 8000ft as we hit Jasper Lake and started south into the Grand Canyon's national park area.
Racing the sun to Cape Royal was a bit of a challenge, but I managed to keep it tame enough that not only did the park rangers not want to chase me down, Revar was able to get in some good napping time. We got to the rim just in time for sunset.
We didn't get to see much before the sky went dark, making picture-taking a challenge. Poor Revar had a software error on the mac, making it dump/delete all the 'raw format' images taken that evening, ending up with only one picture. I got a few more, but most were washed out by the oncoming mists of evening filling the valley floor. By the time we got back to the lodge it was pitch black. Once again, we were quite tired and now about 500 feet higher than we were at the Bryce lodge. We got our names in for dinner and sat down with our maps and laptops to figure out what to do next.
We were too tired to really be effective drivers, doubly so with the sheer number of deer that had been hopping into my headlights on the way to the lodge. A quick check got us the very last room available at the Grand Canyon lodge -- a separate cabin just like we had at Bryce. It was cheaper, too! The dinner more than balanced that out, however, proving to be the most expensive and least enjoyable of any of the trip. :/ With the parking notably off from where the cabins were I happily took advantage of the porter service and their little electric-carts, giving the fellow a good tip for his effort. We got a huge cabin, strangely enough -- four beds! Revar took one half of the cabin and I got the other, so for a change my whines-at-altitude CPAP machine wouldn't disturb his sleep. We finally crashed out just after midnight, once more sleeping like dead timber.
