Bryce Canyon National Park - Ruby's Inn, Utah

The next morning we headed westward along Utah Highway 12 towards Bryce National Park. We had been told that this highway was both beautiful and challenging and boy were those reports correct. Beautiful mountain scenery, including aspens with gorgeous golden foliage were everywhere along the highway. At the same time, there were many sharp, twisting turns and steep drop-offs, including one section where the two lane highway ran along a mountain spine with sharp drop-offs on both sides. Needless to say, Jo avoided looking outside at these drop-offs and instead spent her time reading her camera manual with her eyes firming fixed at the manual which she held in the space between the driver and passage seats. That is why we have no pictures of those portions of the highway with the steep drop-offs. LOL!!!!! But the beauty of the scenery made it definitely worth while taking Highway 12 to Bryce Canyon.

We were not surprised to find when we arrived at the campground at Ruby’s Inn, that the higher elevation (almost 8,000 feet) was accompanied by much colder temperatures. For the first time on our Great Adventure, it was necessary for us to disconnect and drain our outside water lines each night because of freezing overnight temperatures. While we found this to be an inconvenience, our friends Rick and Ann were even more distressed since their “70 degree-90 degree rule” meant that they do not like staying at any places where the temperature dropped below 70 degrees , to say nothing of freezing temperatures!!!

But boy was it worth it!!! Unlike our previous trip to Bryce two and one-half years ago, in the spring of 2005, this time there was no snow yet at the park. The first day, we visited the numerous overlooks along the scenic drive in the park which allowed visitors to see all the beautiful rock formations carved out over the centuries by wind and water erosion. Jo was in hog heaven and took hundred and hundreds of photographs trying to capture how the different angles of light at the various overlooks changed the way the rock formations appeared. The climax was the beautiful views from sunset point as the setting sun seems to turn many of the hoodoos transparent as the setting sun shone through the rock formations to where we were perched at Sunset Point.

The next morning Jo dragged David out of bed while it was still dark outside so that she could photograph the hoodoos in the light of the rising sun. As luck would have it, there were rain clouds to the east which blocked the rising sun and destroyed her photographic hopes. David, on the other hand, was wishing he had had a few more hours of sleep!!!!

All this was soon supplanted by the wonders of hiking down into Bryce Canyon. Two years ago, we had not been able to hike into the canyon because the trails down had all been snowed in. No, while we had the cold, snow had not yet arrived. Thanks to the travel books we had with us, we started our hike by going down the Navajo Trail. We were astonished at the beautiful, sheer rock walls of the narrow passage the trail took through the rock formations, particularly in the section they referred to as “Wall Street.” Amazing to see the sheer walls rising above you in a slot canyon only a few feet wide carved by flash floods during the last several thousand years. It was further astonishing to find a few tall pine trees growing up right in the middle of these narrow slot canyons. Good thing Jo had her camera along as we don’t think people would believe just how gorgeous this scenery was. The beauty of this hike was enhanced by the fact that we had this trail virtually to ourselves. Except for a family of four, with two small children, who lagged substantially behind us, there was no one else anywhere around us on the Navajo Trail. This is probably a benefit of our having gotten up at an ungodly early hour in the hopes of taking pictures when the sun rose. While this early start didn’t give us the early sunrise pictures, it did give us wonderful solitude on the Navajo Trail.

This solitude continued for the next hour when we left the Navajo Trail and started on the Queens Court Trail” along the floor of Bryce Canyon. The beauty of hiking in Bryce Canyon is that, once to hike down into the canyon, the trail along the floor of the canyon if fairly level for several miles. We really enjoyed both eh solitude of the trail and the different vantage points of being able to look at the hoodoos from ground level looking up rather than being confined to looking down at them from the overlooks above.

During the last third of the hike, as we started to climb back up to the canyon rim, we began to encounter other hikers who were starting down from the trailhead for the Queen’s Court Trail. As we progressed, the number of hikers going in the other direction increased to the point that it began to feel like we were walking along a busy sidewalk in downtown Washington D.C. The extent to which this diminished the enjoyment of the latter portion of this hike only accentuated just how wonderful it had been for the first two thirds of the hike when we had had the trail virtually to ourselves. Notwithstanding the crowds we had experienced at the end of the hike, we finished our hike still carrying the wonderful visions of the beauty of the Navajo Trail and the wonder of hiking the floor of the canyon in solitude.

That night, while staying in the Ruby’s Inn campground, we had some of the heaviest rains we had experienced since leaving Illinois. We wondered whether this heavy rainfall had anything to do with the fact that we were spending that evening with our friends from Illinois, Rick and Ann!!!! Nothing like having friends over for games and several glasses of wine while it is raining outside!!!!

While weather.com had assured us that the overnight temperature would finally be above freezing, David was dismayed the next morning to find that rain water from the overnight rains had turned to ice. Before he could roll up the toneau cover on the pickup truck, so that we could hitch up to the Big Sky, he had to scrape sheets of ice off the toneau cover. An when Jo went to retract the slides, David had to dodge aside to avoid being struck by pieces of ices falling down from the toppers on the slides which had collected rain water from the night before which subsequently froze into ice. Thank gosh we are heading to lower altitudes and warmer weather.