Utah's not done with us yet

John may have gotten "rocked out" temporarily, but Debbie was insistent that we visit all five of the National Parks in this state.  So from Capitol Reef, we pushed on to Bryce Canyon and John has to admit that the third park --Capitol Reef-- invigorated his attitude. 

As opposed to Canyonlands and Arches, which were studies in erosion, the third park was formed by a "local" (hundred{?} mile long) disturbance that thrust a line of rock up in a "small" area.  The result was that long, narrow valley between impossibly high cliffs of near vertical stone that we saw in the last chapter.

Bryce Canyon is entirely different.  We drove past simply huge acreage of greened land, turned to climb another canyon road (through these tunnels),
across some more miles of what could only be considered prairie (in fact, they are home to prairie dogs!), and then found areas where settlers put down roots with a vast wonder at their back doors.

Again, we apologize that a camera --even a relatively sophisticated dedicated type (not our phones!)-- is just too, too small a device to render such a hugely grand scene.

In fact, many times Debbie and John both lowered the camera, realizing any attempt at capturing what we could see would be dismayingly, disrespectfully pointless. {see about the hoodoos below}

The canyon climbs to more than 9,000 feet above
sea level.








That is snow in mid-May.

   

One of the pictures above showed a veritable garden of hoodoos.  These are peculiar rock spires caused by weathering.  The spires are pancaked layers of different types

Hoodoo

of sandstone that erode at different rates, often causing fatter tops to be perched on top of skinnier shafts.  Occasional hoodoos show up all over the Western red rock deserts, but in this area, hoodoo spires are so numerous because of vertical fracturing and the weather, which cycles through a less-than-24-hour freeze/thaw 180 days a year.  (And yet, Ms. Whitmer there are NO potholes in these roads, which continue to be maintained with a lower gasoline tax than--   ach!  nevermind; you're not reading this anyway.)



Let's get a better perspective on the sheer size of these things:

We've been more than a week above a mile high now, but these three days spent here are the highest yet.  John noticed some very mild evidence of altitude sickness, but at least that coughing virus has nearly disappeared.  Things is, though, tea is never hot-hot!  (Water boils at a lower temperature, the evaporative technology refrigerator has difficulty, the generator puts out less power, vehicles get less mileage, etc.  Millibars!  My kingdom for more millibars of oxygen!)

Speaking of the weather, we arrived on a mostly sunny day with Debbie intent on reprising our BLM (read: Free!) experience.  After getting an overview from a helpful Visitors Center volunteer, we ended up turning off Utah SR12 north on Tom Best Road, to find it sort of like Michigan: sandy loam under nicely graded and defined camping areas carved out of the high-altitude fir forest (we hesitate to name tree species in our ignorance).  Late in the afternoon, we found a great place with a rock fire pit, parked the coach, went around to scavenge wood from a couple vacant sites (we'd need a permit to cut anything), and laid out our patio carpet and table, expecting to have a relaxing evening tomorrow in our chairs by the fire with, perhaps, a Michigan microbrew in our fists.  Then we woke up to find that not even the NWS saw this coming ...and not even after it had been in progress a few hours!

   

It finally stopped snowing about three inches later at noon.  By evening, it was gone.  High temps were comfortably (for John) around 50.  Debbie's blood has forsaken its Norse cold weather heritage.

On our third day of roaming the canyon, John talked with a tourist who noticed the towing prongs on the front of our Honda.  It turned out he was another Fulltimer, whose only house was the one on wheels.  We're not sure we want to take that step.  Anyway, he'd just come north to Bryce Canyon from south of Lake Powell, Arizona, an area known as Marble Canyon featuring the Vermilion Cliffs.  We decided to add that to the itinerary seeing as how we have some extra time, having cut snowy Colorado out of earlier travel.  The man was a fount of information about camping that area and told us of a developed BLM  opportunity at Lee's Ferry: paved roads, vault toilets, a coach sanitation station with potable water, picnic tables and even camp shade shelter for those without a mobile house.  It's not free, but ten bucks a night (for us oldsters, and thank you young taxpayers for picking up the other half of that fee) fit Debbie's specs, as well.

John's wanted twin .50 cals
on his front bumper forever,
but this is the closest he's come so far.

We'll get to those Vermilion cliffs, but we have one more National Park in Utah, yet, and this one is really unique, too.  Stay Tuned.