Oddly, after yesterday’s hike, we all had a lot of trouble sleep. Except Ellie, whose snores indicated a great night’s sleep. We all woke up with our whole bodies aching in soreness. Except Ellie, who suggested the one advil she took without water was stronger than what the rest of us took with water. We all woke up with odd patches of sunburn where we missed random spots during one of the many sunscreen applications yesterday. Except Ellie, who woke radiantly tan.
The rest of us found that getting out of bed allowed our muscles to stretch and we felt a bit better. We found a cute coffee shop/hotel/post office. Turns out that in the town of Tropic (and many other of the places we’ve stayed) all the most important businesses are combined. Anyway, I got my morning coffee and we set off to explore a part of Bryce we have never seen. We found a waterfall and it just blew our mind. We had felt like we were in such an arid, hot desert, but suddenly we heard and then saw a rapid river. During the pioneer days, a ditch was built to provide water and irrigation from a reservoir. The man power that it must of taken without modern technology is mind blowing to think about. The waterfall, although not as grand as Niagara Falls, was quite lovely. We also saw the “Moss Cave.” I thought it was a bit lame, just some moss growing on the underside of a rock.
We then drove back through the town of Tropic and a handful of other tiny towns on our way to the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. They should of marked the visitor’s center a bit more clearly, or even at all, because we ended up going the wrong way. We spoke to a friendly ranger who gave us a short list of low key sights to check out. We also stopped at a multi-agency visitors center and got even more tips.
We drove Highway Scenic 12, a stretch of road that simply put is quite scenic. To go into more detail would require adjectives than I know. At one point the road was nothing more than a thin ribbon with steep dropoffs on either side. I will say that so much of southern Utah looks like another planet and I wouldn’t believe that land could look like this without seeing it.
We found a small river that the girls and I were able to wade about and we took an eleven mile detour down a dirt road deep into a canyon to see natural bridges. So unreal. We also ate pb&j and cheetos in the car…see how low key the day was.
Last year we were only able to drive through Capitol Reef National Park, stopping only at the more touristy things, the petroglyphs and some pioneer buildings. I was really looking forward to spending more time, but we didn’t have the energy so we stopped at the same touristy things instead.
Eventually we made it to out dinner destination, the super tiny town of Hanksville. We stopped in the grocery store/pizzeria/nail salon/art gallery and to stock up on water and ice for the night of camping. Then we found a darling grill/rv park/campground and ordered giant dinners to carry us through the night of camping.
Finally, we were on our last leg of the night, the one and half hour drive to Horseshoe Canyon. Let me tell you a bit about this drive. We were in the middle of the desert, 94 degrees, not a soul anywhere in site. The road was dirt and as I looked out the window into the distance I saw what appeared to be lush green fields. However, when I looked at the side of the road I saw that the small desert plants were actually spread as far as I could see. Between each one was sand. I thought about how strong the roots of the plants must be because the wind was blowing the sand. In fact, there was one section of road with sand dunes a couple of feet high in the middle of the road making it difficult to pass. We saw cows freely grazing, no barrier between us and them. The drive was long and isolating. To give more of an idea as to where we were, the real events from movie “127 Hours” happened right here. Also, Kristin Cavallari’s brother was found dead right here. Pretty serious environment.
We finally found the end of the road and set up camp. There was one other group of 2 guys in their 20s camping nearby. We set up our tents, watches the sunset, heard serious warnings about mountain lions from the guys, and cozied up in our tents. What a day it was!!
