Utah - Day 4

We only did 1 park today and then part of another park.  So this blog will be pretty quick.  Our first park today was Rainbow Bridge National Monument.  The only way you can get to this park is to take a boat ride on Lake Powell (which is part of Glen Canyon NRA).  It's about a 2.5 hour ride each way with a one-mile hike through the Bridge Canyon to get to Rainbow Bridge National Monument.  The hike is absolutely beautiful and it's even better when you get to Rainbow Bridge.  Rainbow Bridge is the world's largest naturally-made arch, and it's very impressive up close!  The nice thing is, since this is only accessible by boat, the crowd is kept to a minimum (although, I'm sure in the warmer months it's probably much more crowded), and the small crowd allows for better reflection at the bridge.

Castle Rock on Lake Powell

Bridge Canyon

Rainbow Bridge - notice how small the people are?

Wildlife!

Bridge Canyon again

We got off the boat and had a slightly long drive to Bryce Canyon National Park.  We've only had a taste of this park so far because we got here in time to see sunset on the hoodoos.  Funny that Bryce has a Sunset Point and a Sunrise Point, but the lady who checked us into the lodge said that sunset is better viewed from Sunrise Point.  Thankfully we had clear skies today so we made our way to Sunrise Point which is only about a half-mile hike away from where we are staying.  We caught sunset in time, but we were blown away by just how big Bryce is when looking out from the hoodoo dome.  We could see for miles and miles and miles!

Another reason this is a short blog is because we're getting up early to catch sunrise on the hoodoos.  I have the feeling that will be more impressive than the sunset we had.

Weird how the tree grew this way.

Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon NP

Us at Bryce

More hoodoos at Bryce

Utah - Day 3 (But Really Arizona)

Today has been my favorite day of the trip so far!  We started off at Monument Valley and we were very glad we reserved an SUV for this trip.  The entire drive through the park is not paved at all and very bumpy.  Most of what you see in Monument Valley are mesas and buttes.  The absolute highlight of the park is aptly named Artist's Point.

Three sisters

Totem Poles

Artist's Point

Our next stop was to Navajo National Monument.  Steve and I had no idea what to expect with this park and we were pleasantly surprised!  We did the Sandal Trail hike, which is just over a half mile one-way, and this ends at an overlook to see Navajo ruins in the canyon.  The hike was pretty easy, but it is entirely uphill on the way back and you're at over 7,000 feet in elevation.  You want to feel out of shape really fast?  Hike about 20 steps at 7,000 feet elevation, uphill.

Ruins in the canyon

Same ruins, just using the zoom lens

A quick back story:  Monument Valley was supposed to take about 2 - 4 hours to do the entire drive.  We realized that the 4 hour time is likely for peak season and taking traffic into account, but we were able to get the whole drive done in just over an hour and a half.  Because of this, we were WAY ahead of schedule.  So we went to Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (NRA) to get the Rainbow Bridge National Monument stamp.  We were supposed to go to both of these places tomorrow, and the Rainbow Bridge stamp is only at Glen Canyon.  Don't worry, I forward-dated it to tomorrow so it's correct!  ;-)

Anyway, Steve and I have been to a couple NRA's and we're always kind of bored with them.  Usually NRA's involve a giant lake (usually man-made) and the only things to do in the park involve boating.  So the agenda at an NRA is usually go find a scenic overlook of said giant lake, take a picture, and that park is done.  Glen Canyon though, is actually really cool and very pretty!  We went to the scenic overlook of the Glen Canyon Dam, Wahweep overlook, and Horseshoe Bend.  Horseshoe Bend is about a one-mile round trip hike (again, the entire way back is uphill...but this is TOTALLY worth it!!).

Actual dinosaur tracks found at Glen Canyon

Glen Canyon Dam

The other side of the bridge over the dam - Colorado River

Wahweep Overlook

Horseshoe Bend

Today's highlight, hands down, was the Antelope Slot Canyon tour.  Holy crap, this was awesome!  Sara, thank you so much for reminding us of this because we loved it!  Not only is it a beautiful site, but our tour guide, Leonard, was quite the character.  He would point out a cool feature in the canyon and then have everyone in the group hand him their camera and he took pictures of that feature for everyone.  He's been giving this tour for 12 years, knows his way around every single possible camera that exists, and took every picture at exactly the right angle for the best picture.  The canyon itself is stunning.  It was awesome.  I wish I could find more words to describe this, but I just can't find the right ones that would describe it the way it deserves.  You really need to see this place, and that says a lot coming from me, because it's not even a National Park unit!  Extra bonus - a Great Horned Owl lives in the canyon and decided to smile for a picture as we were leaving!

Do you see the heart?

Adventures Abound in Arches (aka: Utah Day 2)

**Disclaimer 3/30/16:  I wrote this last night, but didn't have internet to post it.  Steve and I are headed out on one final tour today, so I don't have time to go through and change all the times I say "today" to "yesterday."**

Today was a day full of adventure!  We didn’t go hiking today, we went “adventuring.”  We started the day in Arches National Park.  This is actually the second time we’ve been to this park.  The first time we were there was cut short because it was 112 degrees in June and I ended up with heat exhaustion, so we really only spent about an hour in the park in 2012.  This time was much different, it was about 35 degrees and pouring rain.  We started the Delicate Arch hike today with high hopes that we were finally going to see this marquee arch up close.  Turns out, Delicate Arch clearly has something against the Barths because it didn’t happen.  See, Arches has a lot of what is called “slickrock” and it’s called this for a reason.  When it’s wet, it’s even more slippery!  The hike to Delicate Arch starts out on a regular trail but quickly turns into walking on slickrock and hoping you’re walking in the correct direction (the trail becomes minimally marked at this point).  We started to do this and found out pretty quickly that we just didn’t feel like dying today by sliding down a slickrock cliff in pouring rain.  You’re welcome, parents.  J

Feeling defeated, we very quietly walked back to our car, soaking wet…seriously, even our rain gear was soaked through at this point, that’s how much rain there was.  Once we got to the car, we decided Arches was not going to win against the Barths.  We WERE going on a hike today to see an arch.  We drove through the rain, gained some elevation, and the rain turned to snow.  I’m not talking flurries, I’m talking straight up, giant, quarter-sized snowflakes, and lots of them.  What?!?  Snow was nowhere in the forecast in the million times we checked the weather before we left!  We get it though, it’s Utah in March…we knew this was a possibility.  But again, we are not letting the park beat us this time!  We can hike in snow, it’s slightly more pleasant to hike in that than a driving rain.

The hike to Landscape Arch is a very easy hike – I highly recommend it because of its simplicity, it’s short, and has a beautiful reward.  I even recommend it in the snow, but maybe not when you are already soaked to the bone from an attempted hike to Delicate Arch.  It’s windy and we were in wet clothes, which made it even colder for 1.6 miles round trip.  

When we’re in National Parks (and other NPS units), I try to find “National Park Moments.”  It’s hard to describe what I mean by this, but I’ll try.  It’s like a feeling of tremendous pride, awe, and that I’m a part of something much bigger than me.  This moment at Landscape Arch was a National Park Moment.  Our moods completely changed once we saw this beautiful site.  We were ready to hate Arches after our Delicate Arch attempt, but we fell right back in love here.  We were freezing and wet, but when we saw this, we completely forgot about that for a few minutes to just take it all in and say “Wow!”  Fun fact for the day:  Landscape Arch is the longest arch in America at 306 feet long.

The adventure continued when we left Arches to head over to Hovenweep National Monument.  The snow continued through most of our drive and made for some really fun road conditions (thankfully not as bad as the “road” construction on the non-existant road in Montana last summer…I’ll explain in a future blog someday).  Poor Steve still has white knuckles from this drive, but the snow finally stopped about 40 miles before we got to Hovenweep, and the roads cleared up significantly.  Got to Hovenweep with plenty of time to do a very short hike around the Little Ruin Canyon with 800-year-old ruins.

Hovenweep Castle

Square Tower

The day ended at Natural Bridges National Monument.  I’m not going to lie, but this wasn’t my favorite place.  It’s still a beautiful park and I understand why it’s a park, but there are only 3 bridges to see in the entire park.  It just felt a little underwhelming.  We saw all three bridges from various overlooks on the scenic drive, and they were cool to see.  Pictured below is a snowman enjoying the view, Sipapu Bridge, Kachina Bridge, Becky finding a tiny arch, and Owachomo Bridge.

 Tomorrow’s parks include Monument Valley (not part of the NPS), Navajo National Monument, and Antelope Slot Canyon tour (not part of the NPS either).  Stay tuned for more stories!

Utah - Day 1

Several delays and two missed connections later, we finally arrived in Salt Lake City the morning after we were really supposed to...and then after wast-, I mean waiting, 2 and a half hours in an airport, our bags finally joined us in SLC.  All told, this set us back about 5 hours in our planned schedule, but somehow Steve and I got through what we had planned today on only four hours of sleep!  I hope you appreciate how dedicated I am to write this blog right now, because I am fighting sleep as I type this.

Once our bags came, we were out of the airport as fast as traffic laws would allow.  We headed out of SLC towards Dinosaur National Monument.  Most people go somewhere warm on spring break...SLC welcomed us with snow.  I absolutely despise snow, but in the mountains, I find it much more tolerable and quite frankly, stunning.  I really don't know what we were looking at here, as far as a name of the place goes, but this snow covered lake was huge and very pretty.  So pretty, that we stopped for a quick picture, which doesn't do it any justice at all.

 

Once we got through the mountains, the weather changed drastically and we lost the snow and welcomed mid-50's weather!  Dinosaur National Monument was our first stop.  Part of this park is in Utah and the other part (more so than the Utah part) is in Colorado.  Unfortunately, on the Colorado side, there is still plenty of snow, so it is closed for now.  So we stuck to the Utah side which is the side that has the actual fossils found of dinosaurs from 145 million years ago!  We were just in Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas a few weeks ago, and we were blown away by that park.  But Dinosaur NM is WAY better!  Not only do they have more to show, but they even let you touch real fossils!

Thanks to our flight issues yesterday, we had to cut our visit short at Dinosaur and we only saw the fossils.  But what is really cool about Dinosaur is that it's two parks in one:  the fossils, and then a very scenic park!  We had every intention to do the scenic drive here, but we just couldn't because of time if we still wanted to see Colorado National Monument.  We had already decided we'd be back at some point so that we could see the Colorado side of Dinosaur when it is open in the summer, so we didn't feel entirely bad cutting this one short.  It will definitely be worth going back to because the very small taste we had was awesome!

Our next stop was Colorado National Monument.  On our way, we spotted some elk off in the distance.  We were probably a football field away from them, but their butts are hard to miss!  ;-)

Sadly, the Colorado NM Visitor's Center was closed when we got there, so no stamp, magnet, postcard, or Christmas ornament for us.  On the plus side though, the park is always open.  We got there around 6:00, so we only had an hour to do the 23 mile scenic drive before we lost daylight.  This park was incredible!  We stopped at almost every single scenic overlook including Balanced Rock, Independence Monument, Coke Ovens Overlook, and Fallen Rock (the rock face just slid off years ago...maybe Sara and John were there a while back ;-)!).  These are all shown in order below after the general canyon overlook picture.

Colorado National Monument is home to some bighorn sheep, which is always a highlight for me when we see them in a park.  About halfway through the scenic drive with no bighorn sightings, I started to say to Steve as I'm staring out the passenger window looking as high up as I can, that I guess we just weren't going to see any today.  Next thing I know, Steve slams on the breaks because we saw this little bighorn just hanging out on the side of the road!  This late in the evening, we had the park to ourselves, so we stopped the car and took a couple pictures.  Wildlife sightings are always such a treat!

We ended the night with dinner and beer in small glasses at Moab Brewery (sadly our only brewery on this trip).  Really good beer - their seasonal Nut Brown is quite delicious!  The funny thing is, after we ordered samples of all the beers, they informed us that Utah law only allows us to have 2 alcoholic beverages in front of one person.  So we were served our sampler two at a time, which gave us a little chuckle.

Stay tuned for more of our Utah trip!  Tomorrow's parks includes Arches National Park, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Hovenweep National Monument.