The 2nd half of our figure-8 itinerary led us up I-15 from Vegas to the home of the best state motto west of the Rockies, Utah: Life Elevated. (Spirit of America is still my overall #1)
Zion National Park was crowded! Forgot to take a picture of the Visitor Center, but picture Grand Central Terminal at rush hour any year pre-2020.
The width of the canyon is defined by those dotted lines and it is 1/8 to 1/4 mile. With the canyon walls about 1500 feet high, visitors are packed into the valley floor.
We hiked a few hundred feet up to see some waterfalls
Here in spring, the green flora contrasted with the red canyon walls
After 18 hours in Zion we moved on to the bigger and better park further up the Grand Staircase
Being at Bryce is like exploring the Junior Grand Canyon. The lodge is situated at rim of the canyon, which is only ~500 feet deep, not 5,000, and makes for great hiking
Most trails were open but a couple were still icy and closed
Hello western bluebird
Bryce is at elevation >8,000 feet and there was still snowpack in the shady areas
The canyon has a rare combination of cold and dry weather, which allows ice to erode the siltstone into tall pillars called hoodoos. Bryce has the largest concentration of hoodoos in the world.
The ranger said that they used to get over 200 days with subzero overnight lows but last year they only saw 170
We hiked down into the Queen's Garden among the hoodoos. The ranger said that the average lifespan of a hoodoo is estimated at 4,000 years and every couple of years a hoodoo in the park topples into dust
Coming up from the canyon floor in the thin air was a trudge
Sunrise point at sunrise. We used our East Coast body clocks to our advantage and were in bed by 9 pm and up before 7 every day.
The trail ride into the canyon was beautiful
There was a dedicated horse trail and with the horses doing all the work, we could sit back and enjoy the scenery
There were bristlecone pine trees, the oldest living things on the planet. These ones are young and probably about 1,000 years old
The burnt out trees were from lightning strikes not forest fires
There was even a lightning safety page in our hotel room. On this map "0"s and "1"s are unsafe and basically if you're anywhere in the canyon during a storm, you are at high risk of getting zapped.
The Jr Ranger booklet took some time to complete
For a bonus activity, if you found any 3 of 7 benchmarks located around the park, you could earn a special pin
The older girls and I did the Swamp Canyon hike
Sadly our 3rd benchmark had been pried off
Snow pellets from the squall that hit us
Patch, badge, and pin: success!
Sunset at Inspiration Point after a thirty thousand steps day
On the way out from Bryce, we stopped at the Creamery
for some Utah cheddar grilled cheese
Love the beehive on the road signs of the Beehive State
Out into the desert for one last park stop
Nevada was Battle Born because it entered the Union in 1864 during the Civil War and its rich silver and gold deposits helped fund the Union cause.
We've been to the Smokies and the Sand Dunes and now we're at the Basin. All Nevada north of Vegas is a Basin in that none of its rivers flow out to the sea. Great Basin National Park surrounds Mt. Wheeler, the highest mountain in Nevada
Who knew that there were snow-capped peaks out here in the desert?
and caves...
and the Park store was full of board games, more like overstuffed with them. How could we resist? We came home with a tile placement game called Wooly Wars.
With a splitter and only two headphones, the kids figured out how to all watch one iPad
Nevada is so big that we couldn't make it back to Vegas and spent our last night in tiny Panaca
Nearby was Cathedral Gorge State Park, famous for its slot canyons
We loved playing the slots here
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