Adam and Ashley's Alaskan Adventure!!: Sweaty Fun

Bryce Canyon! The next morning we headed to Bryce Canyon National Park. We grabbed ourselves a campground, hit up the visitor center and then headed out to see the park. What this park is famous for is the HooDoos. Rock worn down for thousands of years can create some pretty odd shapes. They look like spires of lumpy needles sticking up out of the ground and they are everywhere in this park. We took the scenic drive in the park and saw many of these off formations. They almost make you feel as if you are in a fairyland.

HooDoos along the canyon edge

The wind is a bit cold but it is not raining!

The view from the drive

Sooooo many HooDoos

After touring around the park we decided to wait out some menacing looking clouds by sitting in the visitor center and trying to use some free electricity to charge our laptop and camera. As Ashley tried to plug in the laptop, sparks shot out of the electrical plug and not wanting anyone to see/cause a blown fuse she quickly picked up the electronics and walked away from the outlet. Leave it to us to fry the laptop charger. Of course we are in southern Utah where there is not a Walmart for easily over 150 miles. Too scared to try and charge the camera battery we just hoped that it would last for the rest of the day. In the meantime to wait out the clouds we worked on our Jr. Ranger booklets. The Bryce Canyon Jr. Ranger booklet was the hardest one we have ever completed so it took a while for us to work our way through it. After about an hour the clouds parted and we wanted to stretch our legs.

We headed out on the Queens Garden/Navajo Loop Trail; a 3 mile trail that takes you down among the HooDoos. We started to walk down several switchbacks realizing with every step that we would have to hike back up out of the canyon on the other end. Trying not to think about that daunting task we plunged on. Soon we were walking around the HooDoos in awe at their structure and ability to keep standing. The hike was really fun and a very unique experience for us. We had never walked through anything like that before. As we got towards the end of the trail the rock walls rose up around us and we came across what is called "Wall Street". It is a narrow slot canyon that has one tall tree growing in the middle of it. Walking in the shade of the canyon walls it was very cool, both emotionally and temperature-wise. As we continued on we came to the point when we needed to climb back out of the canyon. There must have been at least 25 switchbacks winding their way back up the canyon wall to the rim. With grim determination we made it slowly up the wall. The hike was a hot, grueling, rewarding challenge that in the end we were very glad to have finished. To reward ourselves we got pizza and ice cream for dinner.

Heading down into the canyon of HooDoos

Tunnels cut into the rock

Luckily we are just short enough to make it through

Sometimes it pays to be short

Looking up at the HooDoos

This is what the trail lead us through

Aren't those just the strangest things you have ever seen?

"Wall Street"

Looking up from "Wall Street"

This picture does not do justice to how sweaty we were

Narrow canyon passage

All the switchbacks heading back up to the rim. All those little black specks are people!

Soon the sun was starting to set and we were heading off to the Astronomy Program. The one at Great Basin had been great so we were excited to see what Bryce Canyon was going to do. The talk was a bit different from the one before. The Ranger talked to us for about 45 minutes and explaining how the universe and the sun effect our everyday lives. It was one of the best presentations we have heard in a really long time. This speech changed the way we view the universe and made us realize that a lot goes on outside of our tiny little planet. After the program we headed off to the visitor center where they had four telescopes set up outside, pointing out various celestial objects in space. Probably the coolest thing was that they had a special telescope that you could hook your camera up to and take pictures of the moon using the telescope as your lens. If you couldn't have guessed Ashley was ecstatic! Some would even say she was over the moon about it. These astronomy programs are definitely some of our favorite parts of this trip and we hope for more in the future! After looking through all of the telescopes which included galaxies, the moon, globular star clusters, and mars we headed for a view point that would allow Ashley to get some star pictures over the HooDoos. All in all it was an awesome day. We cannot wait to see what else is in-store.