Back from Bryce Canyon...

Yes - we took the kids backpacking in Bryce Canyon National Park. We didn't get the permit for the Grand Canyon we had hoped for - so - this was the beginning of an adventure into the unknown!

The kids were excited - they had never been to UT, another state to add to their list! Rik was excited - lots of new backpacking gear to manage! And - I was excited - a little time away!

We left here around 3:30am on Monday and arrived in UT around 2pm. We were pretty excited because the car did great - we were averaging 37mpg! Hey - even though gas costs more this year - we can actually afford to go places!

We got to the visitor's center only to have Park Ranger Bob tell us that "they" were discouraging people from going on the backpacking trip we had planned because we would be disappointed. At this point, I wasn't sure what to do. We debated back and forth and decided to go on with it. I had done A LOT of research on this and it didn't sound like Bob knew what was really going on. We then went in search of the rim so we could spend the rest of the day looking around...

Wow! Look at the hoodoos!

So, we were up at the crack of dawn the next day to start our approx 12 miles of day one hiking. It was *beautiful*!

I'm not sure why Ranger Bob said we would be disappointed - sure we weren't right up in the hoodoos, but we saw the Pink Cliffs from the bottom - something probably only 1% of park vistors get to do. It was amazing!

We got to our campsite and found a little creek to get water from - which was great seeing as the park rangers hadn't been all that helpful about where the water was either. They had only mentioned 2 places to find water, and in that first day, we found water in 2 additional places. The water in this creek only looks red/orange - it wasn't - the rock underneath was - the water itself ran clear.

That night after we went to bed, the temperature dropped a lot more than we planned and we woke up freezing and to storm clouds. This was not in the weather forecast, we decided to hike out to the road on a nearby connecting trail. Rik had to hitchhike back to our car (thank goodness for some nice French people and a friendly guy on a bicycle). He left us that the trailhead and we nearly froze to death waiting for him! The wind kept getting worse and it was getting colder. A lady on a tour bus told me that they were predicting SNOW! Wow - after all the weather forecasts I'd been reading had temps in the 80s all week. So, I suppose it was OK we got out since we weren't prepared for that. So, much to my disappointment, we ended up driving home a day early. :( The weather was kind of nasty/overcast and windy the whole way home. We ran into a mini dust storm on the reservation coming home and I didn't enjoy driving through that - hopefully the 1st and only dust storm I ever have to drive through!