Day 4: Bryce & Friends

We woke up around 7:30 in the morning. I see a trend developing. I’m sure tomorrow we’ll wake up at 8:00AM. We had breakfast in the hotel buffet. It was good, but we’d been spoiled the last two days at Oscar’s and Porters. After a quick trip back to the room, we were ready to revisit Bryce on this sunny morning.

Our first stop was across the highway at Ruby’s Inn, a combination hotel, Cowboy Buffet & Steak House, adventure sports booking agency, general store, and the center around which almost all activities in the Bryce area spin. Although it had not snowed overnight, our windshield was covered with a thick layer of ice, and I needed to pick up an ice scraper as well as some sunscreen.

Once we could see out of the front window, we set off for Sunrise Point, the only view point we hadn’t visited yesterday, because of the snowy trail. Before we left home, we purchased some ingenious traction devices to slip over our shoes, so we could walk on ice. They look something like the Yaktrax devices, but are actually half-price no-name knock-offs, so I was a little apprehensive.

I needn’t have worried. When we get to Sunrise Point we pulled them on and headed up the snowy trail for the canyon rim, and the traction devices worked great. Yesterday, we felt really unsteady, and ready to slip, but these clung to the snow like Velcro. (Maybe not; I guess that Velcro would be really slippery on snow, but I think you get the idea.)

Kathy picked up a pair of hiking sticks from Costco before we left, and we each used one. It helped our stability even more. As you can see, the sun was just perfect for Sunrise Point. 

 

As we were standing there, looking out over the basin, a Blue Jay landed in the tree right above my head and started singing (or whatever Blue Jay’s do.)

Looking down into the basin, we could see all of the hoodoos topped with snow. Now that we felt more comfortable, we climbed the hill to the Sunrise Point overlook where we met a group of five MIT graduate students studying energy policy and technology. They were also on spring break.

They had flown out to Las Vegas,  rented an RV, and were visiting the Utah parks and the Grand Canyon. They were an eclectic group with one Australian, a young lady from the Netherlands, one Californian, a Frenchman, and a German. We took a group photo for them, and they returned the favor for Kathy and I.

Walking further along the rim we came to Inspiration Point. We had driven here yesterday, but hadn’t felt comfortable walking out to the viewpoint. By this time, the clouds were coming in, and it was really impressive as the sun spotlighted different parts of the canyon.

Here’s an old tree stump at Inspiration Point that inspired me.

We finished up our morning by driving back to Bryce Point where we were able to walk up to the top and look around. Behind us you can see the sun and clouds lighting up the different parts of the canyon.

It was getting near lunch time, and we had visited all of the trails that were open in the park, except for the Queen’s Garden trail, a short loop down into the canyon, which neither of us felt like taking. My legs were getting a little sore. Even with the traction on my shoes, I found myself tensing up. We decided on the back to the hotel to spend the afternoon on a road trip in the area around Bryce. We packed some food and headed out around 1:00 PM.

Our first stop was the Mossy Cave, about 5 miles east of Bryce (although technically still inside the park). We got the last spot in the parking lot and headed up the trail, amidst the red rock cliffs. We met a couple of ladies on the trail, who showed us how to remove the rubber tip on our walking sticks to get a better purchase on the icy trail.

In the winter, the Mossy Cave is mossy no longer. All of the drippings are converted to icicles. It looks like a freeze-frame of a waterfall. The ladies from Wisconsin took our picture and we took theirs.

After our hike, we got back in the car and drove south through the towns of Tropic (where I got gas at $3.99 a gallon) and Cannonville where we turned off to visit Kodachrome Basin State Park. Our National Parks pass wasn’t good here, so we paid ten dollars to drive up through the park. 

It was snowing now, so we sat and watched the snow and the hoodoos in our car as we ate our lunch. On the way back to our hotel, the snow got so heavy that all we could see was white in every direction. It was pretty disorienting and I slowed down to about 25 miles per hour.

Back in Bryce City, we stopped at Ruby’s Cowboy Buffet and Steak House for dinner. The food was OK, but nothing to write home about. We turned in before 8:00 PM.

In the morning, we’re off to Capitol Reef.