Part V: Bryce Canyon And Zion

Salina, UT is where I met Ralph and Judy (Thanks, Cariboostrom). I ended up there because I diverged from my route south through Castle Dale and Emery to find a motel near I-70. The next morning I got back on SR 24 towards Escalante. I was entering an area with a ton of well-known national parks: Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches, and others.


On my way to Bryce, I stopped near the Burr Trail to have lunch.






Then on to Bryce!




I saw a sign for this coffee shop on top of a mountain so I took the gravel drive up to it and found it to be an amazing place!


It's a low lying building built into the side of the hill with windows down the side, each with a great view.


Views like this one. I sat here and had the best mocha ever, perhaps because I was starving after riding through the desert all day.


Before you officially pay and get into Bryce you can stop and make a little hike up to a cave. I think it was called Mossy Creek Cave. If you're there at the right time of year you can see large icicles hanging from the top of the cave. I hiked in, took some pics along the way but found the cave unimpressive and icicle-less.


There's nice scenery all around though.


Welcome to Bryce Canyon. I arrived later in the day so I went to find some camp sites. I ended up camping with a lot of other people around but the camp site was really nice and clean and at night was very quiet.


While I sitting eating a dinner of Yellowstone Animal Crackers a man walked up to ask me about the bike. He sat at my picnic table and talked about motorcycles he'd owned for about 30 minutes. By then it was getting dark so I crawled into my tiny coffin of a tent and hit the sack.


The next morning I rode through the park to take in all the vistas and see where and how I might hike down among the hoodoos (the tall thin rocks you see everywhere).


From the road you can see all sorts of cool things. Like this arch.


And some panoramic views. Unfortunately I don't have a lens to do this justice.


I parked at Sunset Point and made me way down into the canyon following one of the loop trails.


Its incredible how such a small area can have such a diverse range of things to see. This moonscape was in among the hoodoos.


I had a map but I just wandered around until I was ready to go back up then just looked for a trail that looked like it went up.


There are a couple of these around to go through (or rest in/near because the sun is relentless).


There are a couple of tight squeezes too...


This is a place called Natural Bridges. You can see two bridges of stone that span from one canyon wall to the next. The people in foreground and background should give you a sense of scale.


It is a tough road out of the canyon, depending on which trail you decide to take up. I decided to take the wrong one. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's fun though. All in all it was only a 3 mile hike.


Coming up out of the canyon.




Having spent most of the day walking the canyon and eating only a half bag of almonds and drinking a liter of water, I was starving. On my way to Zion I stopped at a roadside place across from this junk store. I had a "chili size" which I saw on a lot of menus out west but had never heard of before. It's just an open face chili burger. Funny how I have trouble remembering the names of all the small towns I went through (like Salina) but I can remember what I ate at eat meal...


Not too far away from Bryce Canyon is Zion National Park. I don't know if I was just grumpy from lack of food before or it was hot but I was very frustrated by this park. It was a fun ride in through two tunnels, one of them 1.1 miles long but once inside there were huge crowds of kids unloading from buses, families in matching shirts, and just a sea of humanity I had come out here to avoid. The only way through the park is by shuttle, you can't drive yourself and I was too annoyed at the whole thing to bother figuring it out so I saw what I could of the mountains from around the visitor center and then checked the campgrounds for a site, all full, then got out of there. I'm sure its a great park if you have a plan and the time to shuttle in, hike, and camp but I wasn't up to dealing with the crowds and waiting in line on the roads. So following the route Judy and Ralph had given me, I was off to Page, AZ.