To The Grand Canyon We Go

 

Back in Juicy to drive from Zion to the South Rim.  The views were beautiful and we stopped along the way, including a few road side Navajo art stands and massive bolder outcrops along the road.  The kids endlessly entertained themselves with car games, books, and Fidget spinners.  Merrick and Grace spent over an hour playing some version of guess what color sucker I am holding.  I think they now know every nuance of Dum-Dum Sucker labels.  The expanses of the drive were huge, from Zion to the South Rim of the Canyon requires a large arc of a drive to circumnavigate the canyon.  The Canyon is amazing and there are no words to describe its beauty, vastness or longevity in the lanscape that will outlast us. It is truly huge in all aspects.  Our first views were from Desert View and the Tower, circling ravens and turkey vultures add to the splendor of it all.  We hit the overlooks and scouted the trails for the tomorrow's hike.  There is a Rim to Rim hike, we didn't even consider this 22 mile hike to the bottom of the canyon and then back up the other side.  We looked at both trail heads on either side and planned a deadhead hike down and back.  There was excessive heat warnings and the temperature increases 10 degrees for every 1000 feet you go down.  With a rim temperature in the nineties the canyon floor is over 120 degrees.  The canyon is over 5000 feet (a mile) from rim to river.  We headed in to the main visitor center and were immediately greeted with three roaming elk.  Later in the day on the way back our hotel we stopped for two massive 7x7 males in full velvet browsing along the road.  We spoke with the ranger and decide to hike the South Kaibab trail to Cedar Ridge the next morning and get an early start to avoid the heat.  We ate dinner and then headed back to Mather point for a Star show.  It was a cloudless new moon night and the local astronomer's club was hosting a star gazing event with more than 40 telescopes on the Canyon's rim.  We saw nebulae and Saturn's rings along with binary stars and multiple planetary moons.

Where the Land goes Up

The Anasazi and the Paiute called the Zion region home long before the most recent waves of European immigration.  The Paiute called the region the place where the land goes up and does it ever.  The walls are vertical faces that rise 800 to 1000 feet in all directions.  It is a place for use to test our mettle at slot canyon hiking.  We hiked the Narrows, bottom - up which is easier than the top down through hikes and meant for day hiking.  80 % of people don't make it to the end of the route, we now count ourselves among that group.  We are proud 80 percenters! We rented sticks for $5...yup we paid thirty dollars to use sticks in a national park...they came with canyonnering boots as well as neoprene socks.  It was required equipment for a terrain we had never encountered.  We hiked for over 5 hours and the deadhead to the trail was still more than 3.5 hours upstream when we turned around.  It was cool in the canyon, water temps were in the mid fifties and the air temp was in the low eighties, so it was our most comfortable hiking temperature of the trip.  We also started early enough that the sun couldn't shine directly into the high walled slot canyon to keep us out of the direct sun.  We had some challenges along the way, Grace got some bad chaffing and Ella twisted her knee and fell in the stream (Virgin River) landing on her patella tendon.  It was badly bruised but after a brief rest she soldiered on and we kept continued on our rheopositive stroll.  The return trip was faster as it normally is, but also aided by the swift current sending us back to an entry point that was over a mile back to the shuttle.  We could see hikers on Angle's Landing from the shuttle, but we never did hike it, everyone being exhausted from the hike we instead decided to head into town and replenish the calories at the Zion Brewery instead.  A little shopping around in the Springdale for the most expensive aquapor ever sold (chaffing is common and profitable in the slot canyons) and some ice cream and it was back to the hotel pool.

Zion, oh Zion

The map route on the map told us the drive would be spectacular, it was a blue line of switch backs.  We left Ruby's and headed towards Zion and ever increasing beauty. We are convinced that we are doing this trip in the right direction, top down, following the water.  The colored walls of Zion are as massive as they are gorgeous, we want only for better adjectives.   Inside the park we stopped to watch five big horn sheep, one of which was a fawn.  Heard through a few tunnels, one of which had to be over a half mile.  Large holes in the state of the tunnel provided fleeting glimpses of the canyon below.  We got wildcat Willie's to fill our bellies, slathered on the sunscreen and hiked to the emerald pools.  The large Cliff walls and water falls cooled the air and we soaked our get and our hats to beat the heat.  Lower, middle and upper pools so named for altitude but also beauty.  The upper pool is against a massive cliff face and the toppled rocks below have the kids ample place to boulder hop.  We wadded the Virgin River on the return trip and made a stop for ice cream too.  No day is complete with or some pool swimming as we set plans for the next day's adventure.  Seems like that will include The Narrows and maybe Angle's landing.

Hoodoo you love

Packed our belly's at the casino buffet and said our good byes to our wonderful hosts in Mesquite, it was time to push on.  It was amazing scenery through the gourge as we added Arizona to our list of visited states. We kept climbing in elevation all day.  The color pallet's subtle shades of tuape, biege and tan are becoming exquisite shades that I don't have the vocabulary to explain.  The beautiful shades and hues are growing on all of us.  Juicy was loaded up with good vibes and groceries.  On a switchback and steep cliffs there was a sudden popping sound in the Van.  A bag of Doritos popped open from the heat coming through the back window, seemed like a good sign to eat doritos! We passed through the brilliant Red canyon and a few tunnels before making Bryce by early afternoon.  Entering Bryce we immediately saw several prong horn and it wasn't much farther before seeing the first of many mule deer.  It has already been an outstanding trip for wild life, but day's end we added prong horn fawns to the list.  We hiked out of Bryce Point first and down to a natural Arch in the trail.  The trails are very safe and as wide as a sidewalk, but still Amy and I are nervous with the kids and the huge heights with slippery scree under feet.  The temperature was warm but very nice for summer Western hikes, with a high of low eighties but accompanied by a dry cool wind.  We by passed Hat shop in favor of hitting some scenic over looks on our way to eat at the Bryce Canyon Lodge, which predates the actual park by a few years.  Some ice cream and rock shops and then it was time to hit a pool again.

Flat Top to Mercado

It wasn't an early morning as we recharged from a travel day and pool time but we did street off work a hard breakfast of all for major did groups: coffee, bacon, eggs and muffins.  We headed our for a tour of Mesquite and splashed in the pool a bit more.  We did hike up to Flat Top Mesa and it was our first real hot weather mid day excursion.  There was plenty of sweat but we still think the landscape looks more like a painting than something we are becoming a part of.  Post hike it was back to the pool to cool down and refresh before heading to a great little paneria / mercado.  The store had wonderful corm bread and the kids all choose a bakery item and other South of the border candies to try.  Today we are heading to a big casino breakfast and then hitting the road for Bryce.

Chased by the sun to the land of the fire

We left in the middle of the night to out race the coming sun.  The sun rise caught our tails at the airport and beat us to Vegas.  Second place still included breakfast so we were off to a great start of our adventure and well worth the lack of sleep that made it happen.  Of course they were cat naps along the way.  We rented a mini van that quickly was christened "Juicy" because it had plenty of take off. That spirited little van would give us some memories late in the day too.  We spent some time on the Strip and hit all the chocolate stores that we could find.  All the kids had more than a few eye opening views as we wandered the street and that was all before ten am. That was about as much of Vegas as any of us could handle and we made our way eat to the Valley of Fire to get a little hiking logged in the books.  The colors were spectacular and the kids quickly found their agile climbing feet and scaled the Beehives and Sunken ship rock.  I told the kids to be careful and Sophia quickly retorted that she felt safer here than on The Strip. We found petrified trees and massive numbers of petroglyphs.  Merrick and I also found some cactus and we handled those for the last time.  At a trail called Mouse Tank we saw two mountain goats high on the cliff face eating browse and leaping carefree along the red rocks.  We found Chuckwalla lizards to be plentiful and everyone got to watch why they were so plentiful as two of them labored on love longer than our attention span would hold.  We started​the trip with orange cones and ended the day with more road building that delayed our travel time a little.  We also got to see how friendly the Vegas patrol interacts under slept tourists rental vans.  He seemed truly concerned that I was doing twice the actual speed and didn't even touch my brakes when I saw him.  He let us go, speeding in his jurisdiction was the only gambling I did all day.  We made it to Mesquite for a great dinner, conversation and some splashing on the pool as the sun set on the mountain view.

Shifting Gears

The school year is winding down and Amy and I were able to have a picnic lunch with the younger two at their School.  We are in the final week of classes now and almost ready to take on Summer full time.  We spent the weekend in Madison for Sophia's soccer tournament and we plied ourselves with sunscreen for the first time this year.  Plenty of sun and heat.  Ella had her last jazz concert of the year, after a year of early morning practices to impress us with what she learned.  The played a great Star Wars piece.  Merrick and I had to run to see it but we made it in time having left his Soccer practice a little early.  That is our lives mostly, running to and from kid activities, but we fit it all in.  Grace usually goes to her Guitar practice fully dressed for the soccer practice.  We had some rare days without plans and found time to entertain and be entertained by Munkle Arky.  There was kubb to be played and campfires to sit around.  We even found time to plant the gardens...finding time to weed them might be a different story.  Merrick was able to build his hydraulic catapult which shoots a clay ball about 8 feet.