Thoughts in the USA

After another wonderful breakfast at the Harvest House B&B, we bade farewell to Springdale. We were not happy to leave, as we really fell for Springdale, the B&B, Zion... but - Bryce was awaiting.

I have to confess here: when we planned this vacation, Zion was more of a must-do for me. I didn't expect it to be special. Nor beautiful. Nor impressive. Just a park that needs to be visited coz it was on the way. I basically wanted to be done with it and get going to the real attractions. And so, when I saw Zion with all its glory, I was utterly stunned, to say the least.

What I really yearned to see was Bryce Canyon and Antelope Slot Canyon. And now we were heading there.

But, just before leaving Zion, we went through the little ghost town of Grafton, of which we heard from a guest at the B&B, who told us about the town and the graveyard. My imagination went flying into full-gear, wallowing in images of ruined buildings against the dramatic mountains, with tumbleweeds rolling in the gloomy wind and the spirits of the deceased still haunting the graveyard.

Nope.

A bunch of few well-preserved buildings, and a graveyard that was well kept. No ghosts. No mystery.

It was interesting, though, to see the plate that listed down the causes of deaths in the particularly unlucky year of 1866, from "Killed by Indians" to "swing broke".

Another interesting thing was to see the graves of the Mormon settlers, all with proper gravestones, full names, dates and inscriptions, side by side with three graves of Indians who were probably converted to be Mormons, but were - apparently - not worthy of a gravestone nor a full name. And so, their graves are marked with little wooden signs saying "Ind. Wiley", "Ind. Puss" and "Cedar Pete". Y'see, they were not even worthy of fully spelling the word Indian. Makes you think, eh?

Interesting place.

And we proceeded to Bryce, driving through the scenic Utah byway 89 - which suddenly started to be spotted with white!

WHITE???

Yup!

Patches of snow that became frequent and bigger.

Lunchtime was getting close, and we were getting hungry - but all the little towns we drove through seemed utterly deserted.

I mean, Grafton suddenly looked like it had a lively rich community life in comparison...

Hmm - not a fun feeling, and it was a bit surreal, verging on unnerving - until we reached the town of Hatch, and a sign that pointed at a restaurant that claimed to be open! With tears of gratitude, we sat at a table, and enjoyed a buffalo hamburger (never had it - very tasty) and the view from the window.

With renewed energy, we hit the road again.

The scenery changed, with a lot of pine forests dipping their feet in white patches of snow, and a lot of rock formations that got me very excited, as they started to look like the photos of hoodoos I saw online.

We were - apparently - in Dixie National Forest, and came to the Red Canyon. Gorgeous place that made me wonder how come it was not mentioned as a highlight, as it had such cool rocks! The JohnnyB said that a lot of people who arrive at the Red Canyon think it doesn't get better than this, so they don't bother to continue to Bryce.

We bothered.

I was so anxious to see this legendary canyon - just couldn't wait to get there. Finally arriving at the entrance, we went to the visitor center, where we read the somber warnings about hiking in Bryce. The keyword was hiking boots. We didn't have any. We had good sturdy hiking shoes, but the ranger we spoke to was very strict on that, giving us apocalyptic prophecies of how crucial it is to have good grip for the ankles. We started to contemplate getting hiking boots at the general store of the little town(?) of Ruby's Inn, but as we asked him about the trails that really captured our attention, we learned that some of them were closed because of snow. As in 5-6 feet of snow!

OK then - we decided that our hiking shoes are enough, and we'll stick with the non-snowy parts.

We left the visitor center, checked in to our accommodations in the nearby small town of Tropic - and The JohnnyB got a lot of points by offering to give up on his nap and go see Bryce.

We went back to Bryce and headed towards to the first overlook, Sunset Point, to get a first glimpse of Bryce Canyon

- - -

- - - and to have words fail us.

Labels: Nature, Photohgraphy, Time Out, Vacation

# posted by Nava @ 11:29 PM