Snow!! and Bryce Canyon

We got up to a cloudy day in Moab, Utah. The dryness is getting to me. My nose and throat and eyes are dry. My fingernails are splintering. My skin is itchy. It is time to get to someplace with some humidity at least. While eating breakfast they were talking about snow on the TV but it was almost 50 at 8 am. Oh, and we revised the itinerary so you can discard your copy now. Instead of driving to Zion we added a park. We set off for Bryce Canyon. It is only 78 miles from Zion but is reported to be totally different.

We drove north out of Moab to pick up I70 and travel west across the state. Early on Dad took the usual pictures of farming and scenery. When we got to I70, he took over driving. (Up until then he had driven 40 miles and I had driven 1050 miles; he had taken 1400 photos and I had taken 3 photos). Just after Dad started driving we got:

**!!SNOW!!**

It is the second snow storm they have had this year. As we were driving we could see that in some places it was sticking and some it was not. Once it was sticking on one side of the highway and not on the other. The temperatures were hovering around 30.


You enter Bryce Canyon National Park through Dixie National Forest. This is a fake arch that you have to pass through in the National Forest. We reached Bryce Canyon in the sunlight, I bought a knit hat, we got our maps and headed for the far end of the park (that has become our usual mo.)




This is the view from 9100 feet. Why is it so hazy, you might ask? That is snow. So here we are 9100 feet, it is 28 degrees and snowing, I stopped to get myself together and Dad took off in search of a bristlecone pine. He turned to look for me a couple of times but decided I had chickened out. I really tried to follow him but when I got to a fork in the path, I went the wrong way (of course, I did not know it was the wrong way when I took it). About that time Janet starting texting me. Signal is pretty good at the top of the world. I gave up and went back to the car (luckily I had the keys). Then I am trying to guess how long I should wait before I panic.




Pretty soon Dad returns having seen a bristlecone pine for the first time. So today you get the tree picture in the middle of the blog. And we start down to the rest of the viewing sites. I must admit I am seeing most of these sites for the first time as I post them. I was freezing and feeling headachy. Meanwhile Dad was giddy with excitement over the snow and the fact that he had trees and rock formations in the same pictures. He was like a kid. (My guess is that when he looks back, this will be his favorite park.)







Bryce is called a canyon and looks like one (having seen the Grand Canyon, I am now an expert!) but it really is not. A canyon is formed by a river eroding away the surrounding land. Bryce was formed by rain falling and freezing and melting (an estimated 200 times a year) - so water but not a river is doing the sculpting. I did see this view and it was neat because everything is so close. In the Grand Canyon everything is far away. A big difference is that because of the wind blowing through the trees, it is noisy here at Bryce Canyon, not that vast quiet we experienced at the Grand Canyon and Arches.



This is called Natural Bridge, but really it is an Arch. They seem to have trouble with names in Bryce.
















To the left is a picture of Hoodoos. Remember the fins from Arches? After the fins are formed, they start to erode away. When the hardest rock layer is on top, the fins break apart and the eroding starts in the softer layers of rock lower down creating these shapes. Aren't they amazing?



We stopped in the Visitor's Center on the way out and bought more prizes for people who comment. Tony, what are you thinking? You don't want to miss the prizes. And, Jeff, it is good that Anne saved your bacon. Andrew is a lost cause. Janet and Erica are trying to earn all the prizes. Linda is coming on strong too. Dan returned after a busy weekend. I hear that Linde and Mer and Beth and Kay are reading but I have no proof.


And one final picture - this is what the same fake arch looked like on the way out. We had 78 miles to drive to Zion. It was a little scary until we got out of the snow. We were driving south and descending out of the mountains. As we drove I started feeling better. I finally realized that the altitude was getting to me. We have been above 5000 feet for days and have been up to 7000 or 8000 often - no problem. But 9100 feet with snow was too much for me.

Now we are safely tucked in and will see Zion tomorrow. Weather should be 20 degrees warmer. We actually are scheduled to spend two nights in one place for the first time on the trip! Hooray.