Road trip update #12

Monday, July 23, we packed up our wet camping gear and headed the short drive to Bryce Canyon to see this amazing natural work of art. We listened to a great presentation by a park ranger explaining how these gorgeous "hodoos" were formed. The National Park is called "Bryce Canyon" but technically it is not a canyon because the hodoos were not formed by river erosion but by rain, ice, wind, plant roots, animals, etc. In Bryce they have 200 days a year where there is a freeze/thaw cycle. That means that at night is gets cold enough to freeze and in the day time it warms enough to thaw. That extreme temperature variance has been the major cause of these formations even though they don't get a lot of rain. Amazing. We took a short hike along the Rim Trail and enjoyed the exercise and the views. After a few hours we were ready to drive to Zion National Park.

This drive on country road 89 and 9 was another awe-inspiring drive. I had not entered Zion through this route two years ago and so I was surprised by the Mt. Carmel tunnel -- a mile or so through the rock -- and then the awesome view of the Zion Canyon (a real one formed by the Virgin River). One of our goals of visiting Zion was to hike The Narrows. This is a path that follows the Virgin River upstream until the path becomes the river. Unfortunately due to the combination of the fires earlier in the month and the rain that had arrived just before us, there were flash flood warnings the day we arrived. In fact, that morning at 8:30 there had been a flash flood. The river was moving at 146 cfs (cubic feet per second) which is dangerous for an experienced hiker. So we spent Tuesday and Wednesday taking other hikes in the park -- there are many. We toured the valley in the shuttle bus, attended a Junior Ranger program on beavers, walked the Pa'us Trail, hiked to the Emerald Pools and just relaxed around our camp site. After three days without showers, we found the Quality Inn in Springdale where you could pay $4 for an 8 minute shower -- that was wonderful. We did laundry, bought groceries and enjoyed the local town.

We got rained on the first night, which helped to cool things down a bit and since we were staying for two more nights, we weren't worried about our tenting getting wet again. Tuesday we had a few afternoon sprinkles but Wednesday we didn't get any rain. The river rate was also slowly returning to normal (40 cfs), although the water was an ugly grey color due to dirt and ash from the fires upstream.

Wednesday night we rented our gear -- special boots and extra tall poles -- for a hike in The Narrows on Thursday morning. We had to pack up our vehicle that night since we were checking out on Thursday, but all the work for worth it. We got to the trail head at 8:30 and hiked for 5 hours. Joshua wanted to hike in the river the entire way. This made for very slow going, but was cool and fun. After a couple of hours in the water, he agreed to take some of the paths along the side of the river whenever possible. This allowed us to make it back in half the time it took us to go up. The path was closed at a certain point due to the fire damage upstream, but the hike was still well-worth it. You can see from the first picture the color of the Virgin River. When we reached the turn-around point, we headed a short distance up a tributary that obviously did not have ash run-off. There the water was clear and you could see the rocks below the water. Two years ago the water was clear and so the hike had been a lot easier since you could see most of the rocks that you were either stepping on or over. Hiking in a rocky riverbed without the aid of clear water was quite a challenge, but we all loved it. This final picture is of the narrowest part of the river that we were able to reach. Maybe next time we can go farther up and see the "real" Narrows.

After the hike we made a quick change into clean clothes -- no time for a shower -- and hit the road for Boulder City, NV, (next to Hoover Dam). We had been planning to camp on Lake Meade, visit Hoover Dam Thursday afternoon and head for home Friday. Instead we drove to Boulder City, found a cute, family-owned motel that was very nice, got showers, had dinner and went to bed exhausted. Next entry -- Hoover Dam.

Sheryl