So the original plan was to go to the temple in Cedar City on Tuesday morning and then drive back to Provo, but since we hadn't actually been to Bryce for more than hour, we knew we needed to head back. So we got up super early and drove five minutes to the Cedar City temple.
The temple deserves its own paragraph if nothing else. I think it might be the most beautiful temple I have ever visited. It sits on the top of a hill in the middle of the town--everyone can see it from every vantage point--and it's beautiful and white and heavenly. I mean, it was almost so bright, being white and the sun reflecting off of it, that we couldn't even fully look up at it. Plus, I don't think it's more than five minutes from any place. And it only got better once we walked in. The entire temple reflects the beautiful surroundings of the area--paintings even of the hoodoos in Bryce, and decorations of the junipers. And for the first time I've ever seen, there were windows in the endowment room. It was so incredibly beautiful, and I doubt that any other temple will ever measure up.
After we dropped off Elder Thomas' coat, we grabbed some Burger King (since there's basically no food between Cedar City and Bryce) and made the two hour drive back out to Bryce.
So the driving force behind what we decided to do at Bryce was Hannah's Junior Ranger program. It was the most intense Junior Ranger pamphlet she's ever seen with the warning that it would take between 3-5 hours to complete it. She had been doing all the class work she could on the drive there, but she had a bunch of other stuff to do as well. But oof, that class work. In her words, "So. Much. Math." She had to do crazy things like figure out her carbon footprint, and compute ages of trees based on rings.
Eight miles out from the visitor's center, John asked that we drop him off so that he could run into the park. Hannah had a plan for the hikes that she needed to complete. In fact, she needed to get pencil rubbings from three separate brass benchmarks along "hoodoo" trails, and the hikes needed to add up to more than three miles. So she came with a plan, knowing how we could do it all in the few hours we had.
While John was running, we completed the first hike "Mossy Cave" which was super easy. In fact, the hardest thing was texting a woman in the ward while I was walking ;-). But it sure was fun to pull out a pencil and see the first pencil rubbing happen--it was seriously cool.
Then, she needed to attend some kind of informational meeting (either a ranger-led discussion, or a trip to the museum at the visitor's center, or a movie). We chose the 30 minute movie at "the lodge". It was terribly outdated (we could see the jerky movement of the camera while someone was trying to capture landscapes), but it was informative which we all like. I mean, there's not much sense in hiking if we don't anything how where we are hiking. By this time, John had arrived, and Hannah led us to the next two hikes.
Most of Bryce has hikes that don't loop--you start in one place and end in another--so they provide a circuitous shuttle where we can jump on and jump off at will. However, Hannah had figured out that we could combine two hikes into one longer hike, get the remaining two necessary benchmarks, and even loop back to our car (avoiding the lines for the shuttle). Having just come off of an easy hike, I wasn't worried....until we started down into the canyon within feet of starting.
I have serious hiking flashbacks to the Grand Canyon still, and it's been years since that most tortuous journey. I don't know what it is, but I have always had terrible troubles breathing when I need to go uphills. Even when I was 16 and bicycling all over the hills and dales of Ann Arbor countryside, or if I had to run uphill during my marathon training, it just floors me. But the most painful experience in memory is when I had to hike out of the Grand Canyon. There were moments when I wondered if I would need to be air-lifted out, because I just couldn't breathe. And of course with my genetically red face, everyone and their uncle feels the need to stop to ask me "Are you okay?"
Well, I trusted our adult-sized Junior Ranger, and the benchmarks were calling, so we headed down.
And here's where I need to stop. There aren't words to describe the beauty that was surrounding us. We had gotten glimpses of what was in the "canyon" at the look-outs and while driving through Dixie National Forest, but none of it could do justice to the reality. It felt like every ten feet, there was a better, more beautiful, different view than just ten feet before, and everyone seemed to feel the need to stop to document it all, myself included.
So, as Hannie and I learned during the movie, Bryce Canyon isn't actually a canyon at all (because a canyon is formed by water, and Bryce was formed by wind). The "hoodoos", the tall, skinny rock formations, were originally fins of rock which became bridges (due to that pesky wind), and then arches, and then fell apart completely, leaving only the tower of rocks on either side. And Bryce Canyon was named for two Mormon settlers named Ebeneezer and Mary Bryce who just so happened to have their cabin right in front of the canyon. When people later asked Ebeneezer what it was like to live right in front of this majestic creation of God, he responded, "It's a hell of a place to lose a cow." #classic
The hoodoos were amazing. The scenery was amazing. The rock layers were amazing. You really can't appreciate it until you are in it.
We found the first benchmark after a while, and Hannah knew exactly which connecting trail we needed to take to find the next one. But as we neared the second, we saw signs blocking both trails leading out of the canyon. Turns out, the weather had caused trail damage, and there was no way out but going back the way we came....straight up.
We thought about taking one other connecting trail that would have added another four miles (with it being only 1.6 back to the start), but it seemed that a shorter, more vertical trail would make more sense than a non-looping, longer (and probably vertical as well) trail. I had the same feeling when I start any kind of a race (but especially a marathon): I knew the misery was awaiting me, and there was nothing to do but run straight into it. We started back and started climbing.
Daddy, man (isn't this the phrase we all use?)--he's a beast. He seriously couldn't walk slow enough to stay with me. It's just so easy for him. And this was AFTER he had already run his eight miles for the day! Hannah was super encouraging, and we just kept going up. I had to stop a couple of times to breathe, but it wasn't near as bad as the Grand Canyon, thank goodness.
On this trip, Johannah purchased a National Parks "Passport" book. It's actually an amazing way to keep track of what parks you visit, and the National Park system does a good job, offering cool incentives to visit the parks. Since Hannah has started visiting the parks on her own (even camping overnight in her car), and since I bought her an annual pass to the parks, she's pretty motivated to fill her passport. Hannah had read in her Junior Ranger booklet that if she completed the "Hike the Hoodoos Challenge", there would be a special "surprise" for her. True to word, she received a beautiful sticker (about 1/2 page size) to commemorate the hikes which she promptly put into her passport. And at the end, she went over to the passport station and got all the stamps and bling that she could get to commemorate our time in the park.
We were sad to leave, but we had a three and a half hour drive back to Alpine to spend an hour or two with Mike and Katrina before we got ready to fly back to Albuquerque. But to be honest, we were out of clean garments, so we stopped at the closest Deseret Book to pick up a couple pairs of garments, and because Hannah and I had made plans to see three movies together (and we hadn't seen one), we decided to go see Shazam at 10:00 ;-). Because, you know, with the Kennedys, "This is what we do, BABY!"
The temple deserves its own paragraph if nothing else. I think it might be the most beautiful temple I have ever visited. It sits on the top of a hill in the middle of the town--everyone can see it from every vantage point--and it's beautiful and white and heavenly. I mean, it was almost so bright, being white and the sun reflecting off of it, that we couldn't even fully look up at it. Plus, I don't think it's more than five minutes from any place. And it only got better once we walked in. The entire temple reflects the beautiful surroundings of the area--paintings even of the hoodoos in Bryce, and decorations of the junipers. And for the first time I've ever seen, there were windows in the endowment room. It was so incredibly beautiful, and I doubt that any other temple will ever measure up.
After we dropped off Elder Thomas' coat, we grabbed some Burger King (since there's basically no food between Cedar City and Bryce) and made the two hour drive back out to Bryce.
So the driving force behind what we decided to do at Bryce was Hannah's Junior Ranger program. It was the most intense Junior Ranger pamphlet she's ever seen with the warning that it would take between 3-5 hours to complete it. She had been doing all the class work she could on the drive there, but she had a bunch of other stuff to do as well. But oof, that class work. In her words, "So. Much. Math." She had to do crazy things like figure out her carbon footprint, and compute ages of trees based on rings.
Eight miles out from the visitor's center, John asked that we drop him off so that he could run into the park. Hannah had a plan for the hikes that she needed to complete. In fact, she needed to get pencil rubbings from three separate brass benchmarks along "hoodoo" trails, and the hikes needed to add up to more than three miles. So she came with a plan, knowing how we could do it all in the few hours we had.
While John was running, we completed the first hike "Mossy Cave" which was super easy. In fact, the hardest thing was texting a woman in the ward while I was walking ;-). But it sure was fun to pull out a pencil and see the first pencil rubbing happen--it was seriously cool.Then, she needed to attend some kind of informational meeting (either a ranger-led discussion, or a trip to the museum at the visitor's center, or a movie). We chose the 30 minute movie at "the lodge". It was terribly outdated (we could see the jerky movement of the camera while someone was trying to capture landscapes), but it was informative which we all like. I mean, there's not much sense in hiking if we don't anything how where we are hiking. By this time, John had arrived, and Hannah led us to the next two hikes.
Most of Bryce has hikes that don't loop--you start in one place and end in another--so they provide a circuitous shuttle where we can jump on and jump off at will. However, Hannah had figured out that we could combine two hikes into one longer hike, get the remaining two necessary benchmarks, and even loop back to our car (avoiding the lines for the shuttle). Having just come off of an easy hike, I wasn't worried....until we started down into the canyon within feet of starting.
I have serious hiking flashbacks to the Grand Canyon still, and it's been years since that most tortuous journey. I don't know what it is, but I have always had terrible troubles breathing when I need to go uphills. Even when I was 16 and bicycling all over the hills and dales of Ann Arbor countryside, or if I had to run uphill during my marathon training, it just floors me. But the most painful experience in memory is when I had to hike out of the Grand Canyon. There were moments when I wondered if I would need to be air-lifted out, because I just couldn't breathe. And of course with my genetically red face, everyone and their uncle feels the need to stop to ask me "Are you okay?"
Well, I trusted our adult-sized Junior Ranger, and the benchmarks were calling, so we headed down.
 |
| Hannah would walk in front of me, because she was worried I would slip and fall ;-) |
The hoodoos were amazing. The scenery was amazing. The rock layers were amazing. You really can't appreciate it until you are in it.
We found the first benchmark after a while, and Hannah knew exactly which connecting trail we needed to take to find the next one. But as we neared the second, we saw signs blocking both trails leading out of the canyon. Turns out, the weather had caused trail damage, and there was no way out but going back the way we came....straight up.We thought about taking one other connecting trail that would have added another four miles (with it being only 1.6 back to the start), but it seemed that a shorter, more vertical trail would make more sense than a non-looping, longer (and probably vertical as well) trail. I had the same feeling when I start any kind of a race (but especially a marathon): I knew the misery was awaiting me, and there was nothing to do but run straight into it. We started back and started climbing.
Daddy, man (isn't this the phrase we all use?)--he's a beast. He seriously couldn't walk slow enough to stay with me. It's just so easy for him. And this was AFTER he had already run his eight miles for the day! Hannah was super encouraging, and we just kept going up. I had to stop a couple of times to breathe, but it wasn't near as bad as the Grand Canyon, thank goodness.
 |
| John took this picture as we were almost out of the canyon...while he sat in the shade of a tree just waiting for us.... |
On this trip, Johannah purchased a National Parks "Passport" book. It's actually an amazing way to keep track of what parks you visit, and the National Park system does a good job, offering cool incentives to visit the parks. Since Hannah has started visiting the parks on her own (even camping overnight in her car), and since I bought her an annual pass to the parks, she's pretty motivated to fill her passport. Hannah had read in her Junior Ranger booklet that if she completed the "Hike the Hoodoos Challenge", there would be a special "surprise" for her. True to word, she received a beautiful sticker (about 1/2 page size) to commemorate the hikes which she promptly put into her passport. And at the end, she went over to the passport station and got all the stamps and bling that she could get to commemorate our time in the park.We were sad to leave, but we had a three and a half hour drive back to Alpine to spend an hour or two with Mike and Katrina before we got ready to fly back to Albuquerque. But to be honest, we were out of clean garments, so we stopped at the closest Deseret Book to pick up a couple pairs of garments, and because Hannah and I had made plans to see three movies together (and we hadn't seen one), we decided to go see Shazam at 10:00 ;-). Because, you know, with the Kennedys, "This is what we do, BABY!"
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