Today was a mundane, unexciting perfect day! We woke up to home bread for breakfast and drove to Canyonlands National Park. We absolutely fell in love with this park.
The hike we had planned on doing wasn’t accessible by car due to the rain yesterday. We were all a bit disappointed since we were going to see ancient petroglyphs. The ranger suggested another hike which was moderate in difficulty and was to have amazing views of a canyon. She was spot on with her suggestion!
The hike began with us being surrounded by wildflowers. These were desert wildflowers, mostly cactuses in bloom with the most beautiful flowers. The terrain was desert, which Ellie accurately identified. She then matter-of-factly stated that we should keep our eyes out for kangaroos. Note to self: teach Ellie the difference between Australia and Utah.
We hiked way down to the bottom, weaved around a lot, saw abandoned each equipment, and then worked our way up and around the whole canyon. The whole like was breathtakingly beautiful. We saw only six other hikers in our four hours out there. Just a perfect hike.
We hopped back into the car and bade the twoish hour drive to Capital Reef National Park. We didn’t know a lot about this park and knew we wouldn’t be into any long hikes. We completely lucked out when we discovered there is a large wall of rock with many petroglyphs. The Fremont tribe inhabited this area between 300 and 1300 CE and documented portions of their lives in pictures on rocks. Just amazing. We had a long talk with a ranger and learned there are many more questions than answers in regard to the petroglyphs. Later the area was home to many Morman settlers and we saw an old schoolhouse and cabin. Such amazing history.
We are now in the car, making our way to the town of Tropic, just outside Bryce Canyon. This portion of the drive has been insane! Lots of canyons, cliffs, switchbacks, elevation climbs and drops, Zak is doing awesome, especially considering we are driving along runners who are in some sort of relay race to the top of Zion.
So, the day wasn’t nearly as exciting as yesterday, but we still bonded, adventured, and had a great day.
