Bryce Canyon, UT–Southeast Utah

It’s Sunday morning and all the Mormons are in church.

Yesterday we did Bryce Canyon, then camped in the Kodachrome Basin State Park, only a few miles away but two to three thousand feet lower in elevation. Which is good, because Bryce Canyon National Park was covered in a couple feet of snow.

Bryce Canyon is known for its brightly colored, dramatic spires of rock that point into the sky in row after row. They’re called hoodoos, and they’re caused when the bottom layer of sandstone is softer than the top layer of rock.

Our campsite was virtually free of snow. It was in a basin of brown dust filled with chimney spires of rock. It cost $14, but included “hot” showers. Berck and I used the men’s room this morning because we have to share a towel. And we were the only people camping. It was pretty cold. Ice crystals formed in my wet hair, making attempting to brush it fairly futile.

Well, we weren’t completely alone in the campground. It was full of cottontails, jackrabbits, western bluebirds, Steller’s jays, and these weird little birds which are apparently only indigenous to the area. They look like a cross between quail and puffins, and they make quite a racket, at times like high-pitched chickens, other times crows.

Firewood gathering was prohibited, but there was a whole bunch of sawed 1x6s for treefiddy an armful. So I loaded Berck up with a tall stack of lumber. He made it as far as a picnic table before it started becoming unbalanced. Then I carried it to the edge of our campsite before letting it drop. But we had quite a fire!

It made up for the night before. Zion prohibits gathering wood too (but there’s a ton of dead wood lying all over the place). So to heat up our supper, Berck took eight charcoal briquettes, doused them with lighter fluid, turned them over and doused them again, then lit them, and placed two cans of soup resting on four pieces of charcoal each. It’s not much of a fire, but having a warm supper is nice.

Today we drove over snow covered mountains, white aspens sticking out of them. Then we went along a road that traveled along the spine of a ridge with, literally, enough space on top for the road. It was called Hell’s Backbone. Then we descended to drive through Capital Reef National Park. It’s a pretty impressive wall of bright red rock that rises out of the ground. On the other side of it is canyons of rock and badlands, a desert quite in contrast to the picturesque mountains we’d passed through earlier. Now we’re heading down into the southeast corner of Utah where, apparently, there are no gas stations. Berck is driving slowly, worried that we’re not going to make it to the next town, 50 miles away. We’re having to bypass Natural Bridges National Monument to even hope to make it. The way seems to be mostly downhill. We stopped at a lodge that had gas pumps, but they were closed for the season.

There may not be any gas, but southern Utah has amazing landscapes. The landscape is chiseled out of rock and sand. It’s mostly desert, and even in the winter, the sun beating through my window makes me hot. I’m glad we came in the February.

Well, we made it to a gas station and put 10.6 gallons in the tank. Berck has put 11 gallons in it before. It holds 11.9, but he doesn’t know if all that is usable. It turned out to the be the cheapest gas in town. It was also only one of three things open. I wonder if we’ll be able to buy soup for tonight’s meal anywhere. It’s a Sunday in Utah.