3 May ‘08
Saturday
Unfortunately we didn’t get our hike in yesterday. When we arrived back at the coach from Bryce on Thursday, we found that our “house batteries” had apparently gone bad (at least that’s what we think had happened). Anyway, we ended up having to go back to Cedar City, some 120 miles away, to try and find replacements. After stops at NAPA and CarQuest, we found that we were coming up short. Then one of the guys at CarQuest gave us a name of a company that might be able to help…Battery Exchange. A couple of hours later, we were able to have our lunch, pick up our new batteries and head on back to get them installed. It’s been a full day, a total of 225 miles round trip, and a receipt for 4 new batteries.
Well today we were able to start our hike at Bryce. Last night we moved the coach a little closer to the park and that gave us the opportunity to get an early start. Bryce Canyon has always been a special place.
The original inhabitants, the Paiutes, believed that the rock figures were people turned to stone by angry gods…well we see them a little differently now, but it does seem that there still is a little magic there.
Our hike took us down into the midst of these delicately colored spires, and let me tell you, you can let your imagination run away with you with all the different figures that these spires make up. We even saw the one that they call “Queen Victoria”.
It really does look just like all the pictures I’ve seen of her over the years. We were able to see the famous “Hoodoo’s” as well, and then hike down into the middle of all the spires. The tougher part is the hike back up the “switch-backs” to the top of the cliffs.
Overall our hike took us just over 2 ½ hours, and it was, “The Most Beautiful Canyon” in the world. By the way, Ebenezer Bryce, whose cattle grazed in the mazelike twists of the canyons, once said, “a hell of a place to lose a cow..”. I’ll bet it was…