Breakfast and Willis Creek

This morning was our first experience preparing (Jan) and serving (Fred) breakfast.  Keith and Sandy were on hand as a safety net and, despite our nervousness, all went well.   I think we'll do fine on our own next time.

Cleaning duties were much lighter than usual and we were finished by 10:30. Serendipitious because the weather hasn't been this good for hiking in over a week.  Ideal conditions (upper 60's, partly sunny) + the whole afternoon off =great opportunity! 

We had planned to hike Cottonwood Canyon Narrows but the ranger at the Grand Staircase-Esclante National Monument (GSENM) visitor center said parts of the access road were impassable due to recent rain and suggested Willis Creek as an alternative.  It's a perfect 'starter' hike for those wanting to explore slot canyons since it doesn't require climbing, rappeling or swimming.  

Colorful rocks



Obligatory tree picture





Petroglyphs (1)





Petroglyphs (2)




Petroglphs (3)





Powell Point rises far above the green Bryce Valley.



Great 'Weekend'!

Because Thursday (tomorrow) will be an all-hands-on-deck day, we agreed to be off on Tues. & Wed.  instead of Wed. & Thurs.  The forecast called for cold, wet weather so we headed for St. George, UT where it's always warmer than the Bryce region.

Driving from Tropic to Zion National Park took nearly three hours.  We probably would have made it in 2.5 hours without the rest stop in Mt. Carmel, the wait behind an RV at the entrance gate and the delay at the long tunnel.  Nevertheless, we were on the Zion shuttle bus to the Angel's Landing trailhead by 11:00.  

Finding a paved trail was a surprise and led me to assume (naively!) this would be a woosey-walk.  The trail zig-zags along the edge of cliffs then ascends steeply in a series of 21 switchbacks, gaining 1700' in elevation in a bit over 2 miles.  The final half-mile of the hike requires one to scramble up sheer rock with occasional chains for handholds and cross a narrow unprotected saddle.  I attempted the challenge but didn't feel confident about continuing beyond the second chain.  Fred went further but decided not to do the saddle.  Even though we didn't reach the very end of the trail, the hike was wonderful: a good work-out with stunning views and some lovely wildflowers.

Beginning the ascent.

Climbing higher...



These rocks have great variety in color, texture and direction.



About halfway up the 21 switchbacks



The final portion of the trail ascends the right side of this cliff, crosses the 'dip' to the left of the tall trees and climbs to the outcropping above the saddle.

Fred is on his way up.

Fred is happy to be back on level ground.

About 1700' above the trailhead at the river.

Descending the switchbacks.

Along the way, each of us found a "round TUIT."  I saw what looked like a bottlecap in one of the little openings in the rockface beside the trail.  It was a quarter-size disk of aluminum, perhaps pewter, with T-U-I-T engraved on one face; hand-written on the other was the inscription,  Max L. Draper, 1934-2011.  I wondered if Max had wanted to hike Angel's Landing and someone saw that he got a 'round tu it' posthumously.  As Fred looked at his pictures from the hike, he spotted what he thought was a quarter on a ledge several feet below the edge.  Enlarging the shot, he deciphered 'T', 'U', 'I', 'T' on its surface. I checked my photos and found another in a similar location

The round TUIT is the small white dot just left of the letter 'r'.

The remainder of our time in Zion wasn't as satisfying as Angel's  Landing.  We walked the Grotto Trail searching for a grotto.  Turns out that's merely a creative name for the shady picnic area.  Next, we elected to do the Lower Emerald Pool trail and found it was more like a big city sidewalk than a hiking trail:  paved, crowded and not scenic.  Emerald Pool, another fanciful name, is actually a large, shallow puddle tending more toward topaz in color than emerald.  Its best feature was the abundance of shooting stars in riotous bloom.




Two small waterfalls (on left) which feed lower Emerald Pool.



Emerald Pool

Shooting Stars



It had been a full, satisfying day and we were looking forward to concluding it with hot showers and a good dinner.  When Fred turned the key in the Jeep's ignition, nothing happened.  I'd forgotten to turn off the headlights after driving through the long tunnel and we had a dead battery.  A park employee at the visitor center called a ranger, who appeared within 10 minutes and jump-started the car.  He saw the North Carolina license plate and told us he'd done his law enforcement training in Franklin and was familiar with that part of western NC--small world!

We checked into the motel and took our luggage to the room then headed to Hurricane for dinner.  We liked our meal at JB's last year so we returned for an encore and weren't disappointed.  By this point in our busy day we were very tired and very hungry and very easy to please.

Wednesday morning we drove into St. George and toured Brigham Young's winter home and the Dinosaur Discovery Center; both were interesting and enjoyable.  We experimented with returning by a different route: traveling north on I-15 to Cedar City then east on UT-14, north on 89 and south on UT-12.  Almost as soon as we turned on to 14  big, serious snowflakes began to fall.  The route would be breath-taking in good weather but its steepness, curves, lack of guardrails and warnings about ice and wildlife made it a tense drive.  About halfway up Cedar Mountain a crew of DOT workers were removing a very recent a mudslide from the roadway.  Next to where they were working was a mammoth boulder, about the size of a semi-tractor, which had tumbled down the hill above the road.  The weather improved as soon as we crossed the summit and began to descend the eastern flank.  In the Duck Creek area we saw two beavers, one stayed on the roadside while the other waddled across the road in front of us. 

Another Tough One!

You know how some days you get the bear and other days the bear gets you?  Well, today belonged to the bear.  Every room in the inn, three of the four cottages and the guest house were rented last night and all the guests left this morning.   That's a lot of work for the housekeeping staff.  Plus there were the complications: mis-labeled sheets, a damaged bedspread, a chair with a broken leg, not enough king-size sheets.  We finished just before 1:00, too tired for an afternoon hike or run .  

Our (small) refrigerator is so full of Bountiful Basket produce that putting anything into or taking anything out of it involves inordinate juggling and rearranging.  I found a casserole recipe calling for artichokes, onions,  and tomatoes--a wonderful way to clear some space in the fridge, I thought.  What in the world inspired me to peel and chop all nine apples for apple crisp after the time and effort of assembling the casserole?  Long story short, we had a good but labor-intensive dinner.  And I gave the other two artichokes to our fellow work-kampers.

Here's hoping tomorrow will be a better day!

Tough Saturday

Glad that's over!  Yesterday was a tough one.  We had a lot of rooms to do and one waited until 11 AM, the official check-out time, to leave.  In the interim, the room next door changed the hang-tag from "Please Do Not Disturb" to "Please Service Room".

 At 1:45 we went to the fire house to collect our Bountiful Baskets.  What a nice surprise!   Two laundry baskets of fresh produce: mangoes, artichokes, apples, blackberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, onions, cantaloupe, pineapple, romaine lettuce.  It was challenging to find places to store so much food in our limited space.

At 2:45 we went back to the inn for check-in duty until 8...8:30...or possibly 9:00, depending on when the people arrived.  It was supposed to be an easy shift with only one check-in.  True, there was only one on the books but there were three telephone reservations and one walk-in.  While Fred manned the phone, I unloaded the two dishwashers and did our laundry.  The check-in came at 7:45 and received a very warm welcome.

Their appearance released us to drag our tired, hungry selves to the RV.  We had a fresh salad and delicious corn-on-the-cob for dinner, a bit of TV and an early bed-time.  Today will be another hard one--all the rooms and most of the cottages need to be cleaned.

Days Off # 3 & #4

Day Off #3:  Doing the Wash

No, this isn't a post about laundry!  We hiked 8 miles in Campbell Wash this afternoon.

We planned to go up the wash into Bryce National Park then hike the Fairyland Loop.  But when  we reached the trail, the temp went down, the wind picked up and raindrops fell.  So we headed back down the wash, saving Fairyland for a better day. 



Next time, we'll access it from inside the park because the wash is difficult to walk.  Its bed is river stones ranging in size from  pebbles to boulders.  Most are smooth and slide very easily; we'll need Tylenol tonight for our ankles and knees.



Pix:





Looking down the wash toward Powell Point



A relatively smooth stretch of the wash

  



Fred in the wash




The view from home is one of the best!

Day Off #4--Bryce Point-to-Point


What a great day we’ve had!  Fred washed the Jeep while I vacuumed and scrubbed the RV’s interior. This afternoon we went to Bryce National Park and played tourist.  We stopped at all but two of the viewpoints. The furthest and highest is Rainbow Point,18 miles from the entrance gate and 9115’ elevation.  Even in the bright sunshine, it was windy and cold up there—with plenty of snow on the ground.

A friend told us that a couple we’d worked with at  the North Rim in 2007 is at Bryce so we stopped in the gift shop and found  them.   We’ll try to co-ordinate our schedules for hiking or Jeeping together.

*Right now, we're working on our downhill technique.  Not only is it much easier than uphill, it provides a fantastic view.

Pictures from various BCNP viewpoints:

Sticker Shock

Coming from an area where tourism is an important segment of the local economy, we expected to see high prices.  But not quite so high... 

A few days after we arrived, the gas station  (the only one between Cannonville, 5 miles south, and Ruby's Inn, 13 miles west) raised its price from $3.89 to $3.99/gal.   Yesterday we  shopped for the first time at the grocery store.  It is a bit larger than a WaWa or 7-11 convenience store and carries just the basics. These are some random prices:
--16 oz. prepackaged shaved turkey breast,  $6.99
--Voila frozen dinner, $7.99
--12-can carton of 12 oz. Coke, $6.59

On the positive side, though, the store is close so we won't burn a lot of gas and carries small selections of fresh produce and meat.

We bought two nice chicken breasts which cooked nicely with the microwave's convection feature.

Weather...or Not

The weather here is just as dramatic and variable as the landscape!  Or perhaps it's dramatic and variable because of the landscape.  Whatever that relationship is, the weather has changed many times in many ways since we arrived 11 days ago.  A cold front moved in Sunday night bringing sporadic rain showers throughout the day yesterday.  By late afternoon, a few patches of blue sky were visible briefly, then obscured by billowing towers of ominously dark clouds.

We went 'up on the mountain' (to the plateau where the national park is located) for dinner at Ruby's Inn* last evening.  We were surprised to see how much snow clung to the surrounding cliffs.  It was beautiful but we're glad to be located in Tropic, 1500' lower in altitude. 

The front is expected to move east during the day, leaving the meterological door open for clear skies and pleasant temps for the rest of the week--and our days off tomorrow and Thursday.

[*Ruby's Inn is a large tourist complex at the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park.  It includes several motels, a campground, lots of gift shops, a restaurant, diner, pizza place,, a rodeo stadium, concessionaire sites for ATV tours, horseback rides, fishing trips, helicopter flights--basically anything you can convince people on vacation to spend money on is available there.

We went with our co-work-kampers, Keith and Sandy, and ate at the restaurant.  We had a good meal of the 'down home' variety and a good time.] 


These pictures were shot from our RV site, looking up into Bryce Canyon.



Monday afternoon




About 6 PM Tuesday...

huge, feathery flakes tumble from the sky...



wrapping everything in winter's blanket...

until morning sun regains the sky.
(Wednesday AM)