David Thoreau
Today we were up and out early to drive through the eastern part of Zion on our way to Bryce National Park. It was a short trip that took a long time because they were doing a lot of roadwork on this section. On the way .we passed through a one-mile tunnel through a mountain, which was quite an engineering feat when built in the Thirties.
Just outside the park, we stopped at a viewing turnoff and did a short walk on the trail down to a canyon to take one last look at all of of the wonderful colors and shapes in Zion.
We also stopped briefly to admire the "Checkerboard Mesa," a rock formation with both horizontal and vertical lines carved into it, so that it resembled an extended checkerboard.
We stopped in Panguitch ("big fish" in an Indian language), a small town which, although we didn't know it at the time, was once the home of bank and train robber Butch Cassidy. Our "mission" there was much more mundane - it was time to do laundry. We found a a laundromat at a motel and while the clothes were whirling and swirling, we did a little shopping along Main Street, where Elise almost but not quite bought a new watch at a gift shop featuring Indian crafts.
"hoodoos" Bryce National Park, Utah
Bryce almost defies description. We've never seen anything like it! If you've been to Bryce, there's no need to go to the moon or Mars. From the rim of the Canyon - about 8,000 feet above sea level - one looks down on a huge plain of pillars, which are called "hoodoos". They have all been sculpted by nature over the millenia, and they are of an infinite variety of shapes and sizes; with just a little bit of imagination one can see in the hoodoos a variety of figures both human and animal, scattered across the area like chess pieces set up at random by a young child.
There are steep paths which enable the ambitious hiker to go down and walk among the hoodoos, or one can merely walk along the rim and observe them from above. We just did a short rim walk today but hope to do the easiest of the trails down to the canyon floor (and back up) before we leave this area. There is a free shuttle which takes passengers on a half hour ride along the southern portion of the park to the various trail heads, and there is also a free shuttle which takes passengers around the rim in the northern half of the park for three hours with a driver who also provides a running commentary about each of the stops along the way. We made a reservation for tomorrow to do the three-hour tour.
Just before sunset we did a short walk on the rim from sunset point to Sunrise Point and back.
At night went went to an astronomy talk by one of the park rangers. Talks by park rangers are almost always both informative and interesting, but this was in a class by itself. He had interesting slides and interesting information, both of which he presented with a lot of energy and a lot of humor so that it was a very stimulating hour. Afterwards we went out in the parking lot and looked at some stars and the moon through telescopes that the rangers had set up. I have looked through telescopes before and it's always a bit disappointing. Stars which look far away to the naked eye still look far away through the telescope.
Road signs you won't see in Philadelphia:
SLOW Prairie Dog Crossing
Controlled fire: do not report (Controlled fires in the forests are now considered a part of forest
management to keep the forests healthy and allow for new growth.)
A note from Thursday, August 3, Milt and Elise' crosscountry trip of 1967: "Elise very unhappy this morning because of the cold."
This was definitely a case of deja vu. The temperature dropped to the high thirties and this was a bad night for Elise. In addition to the cold she is still fighting, she was cold most of the night and didn't get much sleep. She was not a happy camper. We will have to develop a new "cold night plan."
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