Bryce Canyon National Park

And now my pictures turn to orange!  After Zion, we made the 1.5 hour drive to our next national park-- Bryce Canyon.  This one sits at 8000 feet elevation and is a smaller park, easy to explore in a day.  Here we stayed at Ruby's Inn, which was its own destination!  A HUGE hotel that had a general store, buffet, old timey western photography studio, ice cream shop, rock store, campground, lake, and pool!  Heads of antlered animals were mounted on every inch of wall space.  It was something!  It ended up working out pretty cool that each of the 4 places we stayed was unique and memorable!

We saw almost every part of this park throughout every part of the day!  From sunrise to stars, we thoroughly enjoyed Bryce!  Besides another amazing landscape, my favorite thing about Bryce was how accessible it was.  Most of it you could view with little hiking, or even short drives.  The crowds were minimal and it was the first day we weren't sweating from heat and hard hiking.

Bryce is known for its Hoodoo Amphitheater.  These hoodoo rock formations are formed from snow, rain, and wind and are bulbous spires that look like giant versions of when you drip wet sand into a tower.  There are multiple places to view them from a road rimming the amphitheater above.  Seeing them lit up at sunrise was the best.

Another picture in the "Find Delia in the Scenery" series!

At Bryce you drive along one road and hop out at a half dozen places to take in different awesome views.  Here is Inspiration Point.

This one is Natural Bridge

You can hike down into the hoodoos, which we did on the Navajo Loop Trail.  Each step down into the amphitheater needs to be taken UP on the way out!  Switchbacks help with the steepness of the trail, both down and up.  Delia called them "wiggles".

Another neat landscape!

This section was called Wall Street.  Ella is doing some wall sits on Wall Street!

This part of the trail was called Two Bridges.  Ebenezer Bryce, the Mormon homesteader who developed this park, must have been a pretty straightforward guy.  Building a road right to the best views and naming things what they were! 

This rock is called Thor's Hammer and Delia is having a little photo fun with it.

Another little hike we did was the Mossy Cave Trail.  On this one we found an actual waterfall!  Dry orange rock dust covered our shoes and shins on this day, finding flowing water was such a treat!  This was a cool waterfall you could climb behind too and enjoy the fabulous mist.

Another favorite thing about Bryce was the wildlife!  Deer were everywhere!  Meadows were full of them.  A couple fawns even stood in the road right in front of our car for a while.  Dave invented a fun game called "Can't exit the park till we spot 20 deer."  We did it easily multiple times.

Learning in the visitor center that Bryce Canyon has one of the darkest skies in North America, Ella's one request was a late night of stargazing.  We cuddled in beach towels and blankets through sunset.

And then we laid on a bench at one of the lookouts and watched the stars appear one by one.  We stayed until after 10 admiring how the vivid the night sky became in the utter darkness of Bryce.  The moon cast actual shadows of us!  We saw shooting stars!  And off in the distance we watched a lightning storm light up the sky!  Spectacular!

The Narrows

The Narrows was this trip's headliner!  It was the thing Ella was most excited about.  We keep a little "Top Five Hikes" list going, as I mentioned in a previous post.  The Narrows found its way onto the list!  For most of us, it even moved into the #1 spot!  Hiking The Narrows is traversing a 10 mile out and back trail, through the Zion Canyon, while walking IN the Virgin River. It's a strenuous hike in the sense that each step must be intentional and carefully taken.  There is current and rapids, high water, slippery rocks, and submerged boulders to navigate.   You need clothes and shoes that can be wet all day, but still comfortable to walk miles in.  And you definitely need a walking stick to keep you upright!  We walked 3 miles into the canyon and 3 miles back, so 6 miles...and it took all day!  It's an experience that's hard to capture with pictures, but here are 17 that tried!

All geared up and waiting for the shuttle bus to take us to the trailhead!  There's a shop called Zion Outfitters right outside the park entrance that rents everything you need for The Narrows-- from waterproof backpacks to neoprene socks.  We just got our sticks from them.  I read dozens of reviews about how much gear you actually need.  We found we didn't need much.

It's about a mile hike just to get to the river entrance.  It's pretty!  We were on this trail by 7:30 am.  Crowds are crazy at The Narrows.

Once you get in the river, you don't go far until the water gets deep!  We were up to our waist within minutes.  This is one of the natural crowd-thinning places.

There are only a few deep sections, though.  Mostly the water was shin-deep.

Summer is flash flood season and this winter Zion saw lots of snow which is now melting, so the rapids were up!  Taking careful steps on wobbly stones while the rapids tried to carry you away was one of the fun challenges of this hike! 

Look for this picture on our Christmas card! ;)

Ella taking a little break from the water to climb the boulders!

Dave found this heart shaped rock in the river so we had to take a cheesy picture with it.

As the sun rose higher in the day, the red rock walls changed colors!  I love how this section started glowing gold!

Some of the path was through pretty narrow walls.  Guess that's how the hike got its name!

It was interesting how the temps changed as we hiked too.  In this one section, the water suddenly got really cold, even though it was close to noon and the sun was hot.  We dressed in layers.

Fun to find little waterfalls trickling down the canyon walls.

On dry ground again and making our way back to the shuttle.  

This was a pretty awesome day.  Even Delia, who does not love to hike, loved this one.  Each step was an effort, but every bend in the river brought a new fantastic view.  Though it was a hot day, we stayed cool enough to wear long sleeves through most of it because the water was so refreshing.  We'll all remember this adventure our whole lives!

Wildflower

In Zion we had one of our most unique lodging experiences ever!  We stayed at glamping resort called Wildflower.  Here the room choices are luxury tent, mini house, yurt...or covered wagon!  We decided to go for it and take the most adventurous option!  

The inside of our wagon was so cute!  There was easily enough space for us and all our stuff.  And there was no modern convenience we were lacking-- from a/c to phone chargers to a coffee maker!  We loved getting the Oregon Trail vibes without any of the roughing it.  Or dysentery. ;)

The one thing we found pretty alarming was the warning from our resort that it was tarantula mating season, so to be on the lookout for them migrating!  YIKES.  With a little bit of a walk to the outdoor bathrooms, this put no one at ease.  Delia will say that outdoor bathroom was a trip lowlight for her!  Rest assured, all tarantulas stayed in their holes for the 2 days we were here!

The ambience of this family-fun place was unmatched, though!  At night there was a s'mores campfire, music, and families mixing up to play yard games!  Dave played 2 rounds of cornhole with strangers. The pool was super fun too.

But, then a huge storm rolled in.  This looked amazing from outside of our wagon (complete with rainbow!), but it did blow all the wet swimsuits and towels we had hanging on the railing into the nearby tarantula-infested cactus fields, making us have to retrieve and de-thorn them.  And when it was time to sleep we learned that a room on wheels, made of canvas walls during a loud wind/thunderstorm does not yield the rest we were craving!  It was an adventure and a funny family memory now.  Thank goodness we're not actually pioneers!  One night of this was enough for us wimps!  

Zion National Park

After Arizona, our next stop was Zion National Park, where the girls colored in a new state for them-- Utah!  You know we love our national parks.  Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Crater Lake, Mt. Rainier, and Rocky Mountain are some of the most awesome places on earth.  Zion is right up there with them in the breathtaking views and awe-inspiring landscapes department!  On our first day in Zion, we got acclimated and tried to figure the park out a bit, taking just 2 hikes, one easy and one moderate.  

First hike was the Zion Canyon Overlook Trail.  It was short, but it was a climb!  "That was just a mile?!" became a bit of a theme as we navigated lots of hikes with elevation gain IN high elevation.  

But the path sure was pretty with cliffs, caves, and swinging bridges.

When it opened up into our first view of the whole canyon, we squealed with delight!

After the hike, you get to drive through the rock walls in a dark, 1.5 mile long tunnel, coming out with a view of the overlook you were just standing on top of!

There is limited parking in Zion, so it uses a shuttle bus system.  Everything I read said you need to be in the park by 6 am to get a precious parking spot in the crowded summer months.  On this first day, we were definitely not there that early, yet miraculously pulled right up to an empty spot!  Then we braced for the hour long shuttle bus line I'd been warned about, but found we could walk right onto it!  We saw God's hand in the mighty works of creation we basked in all week, but also in the little ways He just smiled on us and gave us such ease in enjoying it!  Even the 40 minute shuttle bus loop was fun to ride!  It was incredibly scenic and narrated by a Native American, a biologist, a park ranger, a photographer, and a rock climber!

(The 3 Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.)

We hopped off the bus to take another hike up to Weeping Rock.  This was waaaaay cooler (literally!) than any of us expected.  This cave/wall of rock absorbs and collects water and then cries a steady sprinkle of it onto all who walk through!  It was like getting rained on!  By rock tears!!  And it felt so good on the hot day.  Everything around Weeping Rock was green and lush too, such a beautiful contrast to the red rocks.

(Checkerboard Mesa)

In Zion we had more cool wildlife encounters-- with bighorn sheep!  This was the critter Dave was most excited to find!  They were munching greenery in herds, or watching cars go by from the red cliffs, or even leaping right across the road in front of our car!

Horseshoe Bend

Our Arizona day ended with another thing I was really looking forward to-- a hike to the Horseshoe Bend!  We decided to see it in the most epic way possible, at sunset.  It was just as gorgeous as we were all hoping.  So, an image of this famous sight is actually the cover of Ella's Earth Science text book.  When I was proposing the trip to the family, seeing the cover of her text in person was actually a big selling point!  Haha!  We had to laugh when we saw this picture EVERYWHERE.  I learned that it's not a hard one to take.  The scenery does all the work for you (and a little filter ;).  Now I have my own!

You wouldn't know it from my camera angles, but this place was PACKED with people!  They were all friendly, though, and mostly from other countries!  (Actually, that was our experience on most of this trip.  We were in the minority being "local" and grew to love meeting new international people in hotel elevators, in line for shuttle busses, and while trading family pictures!)  A couple from Austria took this family picture and I took a bunch for a family from Japan who didn't speak English, but communicated what poses they wanted with gestures!  So fun!

This may be one of my favorite pictures of the trip.  See Delia's little silhouette in the top right corner?!