Tom's National Park Adventure

Let’s start by answering a question or two. I did buy some apples from the Capitol Reef Orchards. When I was leaving, I pulled over and picked five apples that all together weighed 2 LBS. It was an honor system. The sign said $2.00 per pound, so I paid $5.00. I didn’t have 4 ones! The next question was how did they taste? I ate the first one with my Lunch yesterday and it was excellent!

Just so you know……I like sunsets too!

Yesterday I had to drive through the East / West corridor of Zion NP in order to get to my planned destination for the day……Bryce Canyon. Here is a video of the drive.

Tunnel

It rained the entire drive to Bryce Canyon. The drive wasn’t bad, just wet!

I finally arrived and took my entrance Park sign picture.

My first stop is to go straight to the Visitors Center to get my stamp in my National Parks Passport. I usually then go over to the information desk and discuss what I would like to accomplish while I am in the park. The conversation goes like this….. I tell them how long I have to be in the park. I also tell them how mobile I am feeling that day. They are such a good source of information and knowledge. They always start to highlight on a map of the park what I should see and how to accomplish this. Every park is different. They all make up their own rules that make sense for that park. Sometimes I’ll drive all over the place. Sometimes I am riding on shuttle busses or trolleys taking me from point A to Point B. Today was a hybrid kind of day. I drove to one end of the area known as the Bryce Amphitheater. I started at one end of a trail called the “Rim Trail”. It has four distinct Viewpoints and the trail runs from point to point. Some sections of the trail are considered very easy, Some sections are considered easy/moderately difficult. My knee wasn’t barking at me this morning so i decided to do the whole trail. Here are some of the pictures I took along the way. I don’t know exactly how long the trail is. I do know that at the end of the trail I had 11,00 steps on my watch.

After I had completed the Rim Trail, I used the shuttle bus to ride back to Bryce’s Point. I then ate my lunch and drove to the farthest viewpoints, Yovimpa Point and Rainbow point. The rain had really stepped up while I was driving to these viewpoints. When I got there, the rain slowed a bit and I was able to get a couple of shots where you can see I was actually higher than the rain clouds! I was at the highest point in the park. Just a little over 9000 feet above sea level.

I stopped at one more very cool viewpoint on my way back to the park entrance.

On the way to and back from Bryce Canyon I drove through part of the “Dixie National Forest”. The highway took me through an area called “The Red Canyon”. There are a couple of short tunnels that you drive through. I took some video of the tunnels, but all my video’s have stopped wanting to load. I guess I must have overloaded my phone because all the pictures now take forever to load too!

When I got back to Zion NP, I decided it was time to go the “Zion Lodge” for dinner. I had a Quinoa salad with grilled shrimp for my entree. I had a “Prickly Pear” frozen margarita with my dinner and had Raspberry drizzled piece of Cheesecake for desert!

All in all….. a very good day!