On the road again

The bottom of the trail down Bryce Canyon is just stunning. This the main attraction: hoodoos The story goes that when the first Superintendent of the park service Stephen Mather came from Zion on a visit passing by Bryce, his accompanying rangers asked him to detour and see this phenomenon. They asked him to close his eyes and led him to the cliff edge, before he was allowed to open his eyes. He was said to have gasped. Half a mile above the floor Many consider seeing the hoodoos (geologists call these spires or tent rocks or fairy chimneys: hoodoos) almost a religious experience. No picture can depict what one feels seeing this for the first time. Once again we are led down a road intro the park for sixteen miles and at view points you peer down, but in reality you can skip all that, because within a mile of entering the park, you should go to sunset or sunrise point and see the amphitheater below with thousands of spires which will enchant you. Millions of years of...

There are two official entrances to the Grand Canyon, two of which are official National Park entrances, the western side, a hundred plus miles away is managed by Indian tribes, and in the middle lies the reservation of the Havasupai tribe, the original tribe of the canyons after the Pueblo people mysteriously left around 1300. On that western side of the Canyon closer to Las Vegas is the famous glass walkway over the canyon, which had an appeal till we learned the access fee was $80 each and you were not allowed to take pictures. For the Havasupai falls we would have to take a 60 mile dirt road to a parking lot from which we were or to take a 1 mile walk down to the canyon floor where the tribe lives, or sit on a mule down that same path, or what I suggested, take a helicopter ride. In Supai we would then find a 24 room motel to stay, from which to hike to their famous falls. Never saw pink sand before A closer review of the rat motel according to some reviews brought the ...

Escalante sunset During our mid trip week, thus about 50 plus days in, we decided to take a break from travel and rented a very modern home for a full week in Escalante, Utah smack between Bryce National Park and Capitol Reef National Park. All around us is the desert and we border the last piece of mapped USA which was completed only several decades ago. Our rental in Escalante Comfortable look out option Very UN-Escalante home   Here are some random notes about that week: Late afternoon rain coming signs The Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument is a 2 million plus acres large and an open air research lab for scientists of all kind of disciplines, from paleontologists to biologists and even NASA finds this area interesting. It is the last vast almost undiscovered wilderness in North America. Scientists discovered here blue bees and mammoths roamed this area eons ago. I never saw a blue bee, although I stopped at many a flowering bush. On the way to Cap...