sufficient

a hell of a place to lose a cow

aThe next morning (Saturday, I think), we woke up to ominous clouds and thunder. I poked my head out of the tent and made my best rational decision amidst the clouds of pre-coffee-I-only-slept-a-few-hours grogginess: get up ASAP and get everything back into the car as quickly as possible. Which we did, and found ourselves sitting in the car with all our gear in the back as the first raindrops hit. In our pajamas. With all the food in the back. And no one else having stirred from their tents.

We managed to grab the cereal and had breakfast in the car. While the rain mostly stopped. And other people got up to start their leisurely mornings. Oh well. It gave us an early start on the day and we headed back east out of Zion. As soon as we got out of the park, we stopped at a convenience store/gift shop where we brushed our teeth, changed clothes, and grabbed a cup of coffee before heading to Bryce.

Bryce Canyon was my favorite park in Utah from the summer before and I was so excited to be headed back. Unfortunately, we headed straight into more clouds and scattered showers. We threw our stuff down at a campsite and headed to Sunset Point for a hike. En route, I learned that Laura had not slept at all the night before. Not the makings of the best day. It wasn't raining too hard on the rim, but it was really muddy. As we started down the Queens Garden trail, a quarter of a mile down, some hikers coming up warned us that we should consider starting at the top of the Navajo trail and hike in the opposite direction as everyone coming up the switchbacks out of the canyon was slipping and sliding in the mud. We heeded their sage advice. It wasn't raining on the canyon floor, but it was so cloudy there were no views. Kinda disappointing.After our hike, around one, we headed to the Lodge to regroup and figure out how to spend the rest of the day since the rain was forecast to get worse. Hiking in the rain with no views did not seem that appealing, nor did sitting in our tent in the rain. We decided to drive further into the canyon to check out some view points and then go ahead and head on to Arches and put ourselves a little ahead of schedule.

We stopped at Bryce Point and at Farview Point. As we drove, the cloud cover only got worse- the view at Farview Point made it clear there was no reason for us to keep driving, so we turned around and started the five hour drive to Moab.

Labels: roadtrip '10, travel

posted by CP @ 3:51 PM 0 thoughts