To celebrate the end of a tough semester for both of us, we decided to take a little mini-vacation to Bryce Canyon. It was National Park Week last week, which means you can get into all national parks for free! It was really nice to get away even if it was just for a weekend.We stayed in the lovely little town of Tropic, Utah, which has a population of 420. We stayed at the Bryce Trails Bed & Breakfast. Here was our lovely room. And that bed was heavenly.
We drove down on Friday and it was FREEZING! It rained most of the way there and was super windy when we got there. We stopped at a couple viewpoints but it was really too cold to enjoy it a whole bunch.
But I love Bryce Canyon...it is seriously so amazing.
Saturday was much nicer. It was perfect for hiking. We went on a 6.5 mile hike down through the rock formations in the canyon. It was so cool. It was quite a bit harder than I was expecting it to be. Sometimes I forget that I'm packing around an extra 20 pounds and am sharing my blood and oxygen with the baby, and I think I can do all the things I used to be able to. But anyway, it was still very enjoyable even though I had to go kinda slow.This was pretty funny...some people had built all these little rock towers in one portion of the trail.
I loved hiking through all the "hoodoos" as they call them. Every angle was a different sight and all of it was really cool.
There were these little rock windows throughout the trail. It's just amazing to me how these things form.
There was still a bit of snow, some of which we had to hike through. The trail was also pretty muddy in a lot of sections.
This was the switchback trail that led back up out of the canyon. Matt was tracking the grade on his GPS and some sections got up to like 28% steep! He was such a good sport for going on this long hike with me and putting up with my slowness.
Besides the hike we drove through the park to look at all the viewpoints.
We also went to an astronomy presentation on Saturday night that was really interesting. After the presentation they had a bunch of huge telescopes set up and we could see Saturn, Mars, some star nurseries, nebulus things, and some other cool stuff. The coolest thing was Saturn. You could see it so clearly and all the rings too. 
We also had an interesting encounter with some of the local teenagers from Tropic. As we were driving back to our hotel in the dark, they were tailgating us down the canyon and being really annoying. They finally passed us, but then they decided to follow us. Since there is absolutely no one out and about in Tropic at 10:30 p.m., we couldn't really ditch them but we didn't want to go back because we were afraid they'd do something to our car. So we pulled into someone's driveway. They immediately turned around and left. Matt went up to talk to the guy who lived in the house and explained the situation so he would know why we were sitting in his driveway. He was a gruff old man, but very nice, and he said he knew who the little hoodlums were and he was going to go scare them. It was awesome!
I loved hiking through all the "hoodoos" as they call them. Every angle was a different sight and all of it was really cool.
There were these little rock windows throughout the trail. It's just amazing to me how these things form.
There was still a bit of snow, some of which we had to hike through. The trail was also pretty muddy in a lot of sections.
This was the switchback trail that led back up out of the canyon. Matt was tracking the grade on his GPS and some sections got up to like 28% steep! He was such a good sport for going on this long hike with me and putting up with my slowness.
Besides the hike we drove through the park to look at all the viewpoints.
We also went to an astronomy presentation on Saturday night that was really interesting. After the presentation they had a bunch of huge telescopes set up and we could see Saturn, Mars, some star nurseries, nebulus things, and some other cool stuff. The coolest thing was Saturn. You could see it so clearly and all the rings too. This arch was pretty amazing as well. We were both pretty exhausted after the hike, but we had a great time!
We also had an interesting encounter with some of the local teenagers from Tropic. As we were driving back to our hotel in the dark, they were tailgating us down the canyon and being really annoying. They finally passed us, but then they decided to follow us. Since there is absolutely no one out and about in Tropic at 10:30 p.m., we couldn't really ditch them but we didn't want to go back because we were afraid they'd do something to our car. So we pulled into someone's driveway. They immediately turned around and left. Matt went up to talk to the guy who lived in the house and explained the situation so he would know why we were sitting in his driveway. He was a gruff old man, but very nice, and he said he knew who the little hoodlums were and he was going to go scare them. It was awesome!Anyway, it was a great trip. And I did not back my car into a tree this time. Yay for Bryce Canyon!
3 comments:
Way to go! 6.5 mile hike while pregnant? That's awesome! I would love to go back to Bryce Canyon sometime, I haven't been there since 1991 or 1994 (or somewhere in there, I can't remember when exactly).
Punk kids! I love Bryce Canyon too, and I'm so glad you had a great time!
We were at Bryce this weekend as well but we were there on Sunday. We did Zion on Sat as apart of the Free Week. Gorgeous Park(s)... and the weather was EXCELLENT!!
Post a Comment