Bryce Canyon

Hello there! As promised, Ian and I have been super busy adventuring lately on top of all the other mundane things that need to get done in order to function as an adult in society. Before I get into a Bryce Canyon photo dump, here are a couple unrelated updates.

Ian’s new car is performing well so far. Since his commute is three times longer than mine, and my Subaru gets better gas mileage, he’s been driving my car to work while I drive the new car. I love the sun roof and that I feel taller driving it.
My Chipotle rewards account, of all things, was hacked, and one of Ian’s credit cards was used to make fraudulent Chipotle purchases. Apparently, the same exact thing happened to a coworker about a month ago, and the hacker is some loser from California who must have nothing better to do than steal people’s credit card info to buy exorbitant amounts of Chipotle. This guy (I’m assuming it’s a man like a woman couldn’t also be the Chipotle hacker, but still) only buys Chipotle. If I was going to all the trouble of stealing someone’s credit card, I would dream a little bigger.
We finally did our taxes with a well-rated, local company with actual CPAs and not the Turbo Tax bot. Do we still owe a ridiculous amount of money to the federal government and two states? Yes, but it’s not as much as Turbo Tax wanted us to pay, and we got a lot of helpful tips from the tax people to help mitigate some of our tax season woes in the future. The tax people told us that one way to get great deductions would be to have a kid - HA. Don’t get any ideas, people.

Now, onto more fun things like national park trips. Here’s the rundown on our trip to Bryce last weekend.

Our usual early start timed up perfectly with the sunrise around 7:00 AM.

This location is aptly named Sunrise Point.

Bryce is cool in the winter because you get red rocks/desert vibes plus pine trees plus snow (not featured in this particular photo, but trust me, it’s there.

These phallic/mushroom-esque rocks are called hoodoos. At one point, they were attached to the rest of the mountain, but here they find themselves. Erosion is wild. More info on the science behind hoodoos here: https://www.nps.gov/brca/learn/nature/hoodoos.htm

Hoodoos and pine trees and snow - oh my!

This park somehow also has large grassy fields.

Other than at Sunrise Point where we started our day at Bryce, we didn’t see a single person on the trail for the first couple hours of the day. On a Saturday at a national park, that’s almost unheard of, but you’ll hear no complaints from me.

Ian didn’t like the photo with him in his new sunglasses so he made us redo our selfie. He doesn’t read this, so his secret is safe on the blog.

This part of the trail was wild. It’s right off of a parking lot that’s currently closed. You see how steep that fall is on the right? It’s because the trail is literally eroding away beneath people’s feet. You can’t see it here, but there’s more steep falling rock on the left-hand side of the trail too. It’s all collapsing. There was a depressing yet informative sign near here that made us glad to visit when we did because the trail may be gone by the time our theoretical grandkids got old enough to visit.

I definitely recommend looking up, though.

You guys, these biological soils are in my top 5 favorite things about this trip. You may recall my brief obsession with biological soil in the fall after visiting Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches National Parks, but let me tell you, Bryce has the biggest and the best biological soils. I think these blobs of cyanobacteria, fungi, moss, lichens, and algae are so fascinating.
You always have to watch where you’re walking so you don’t step on them and destroy years and years and years’ worth of growth. These little guys help keep things alive and well in the desert. As the saying goes, **don’t bust the crust!**
If you’re as big a weirdo nerd as me, you can find more info on biological soil here: https://www.nps.gov/articles/seug-soil-crust.htm

I am very short - didn’t even need to duck.

In one day at Bryce, we hiked 14 miles and covered over half of the major trails available to hike at the park. The next morning, we drove the extra half an hour to nearby Kodachrome Basin State Park and hiked another 5 miles before heading home. Needless to say, we were exhausted, but it was so much fun and well worth the knee pain and lack of sleep.

My Subaru’s last adventure before being replaced by the 4Runner as our adventure car :’)

We only ran into one mountain biker the whole morning at Kodachrome. It was nice having the park all to ourselves.

The tree that grow in this area are cool because the roots die but are replaced by a tree limb or two as the new source of water and nutrients to keep the tree alive. It’s hard to tell looking at them which are the dead branches and which are the living ones, but they look awful spooky.

Cows also live in Kodachrome Basin State Park. We didn’t see any on the trail, but we saw plenty of land mines and hoof prints frozen in the mud.

Ian is the blog’s unofficial photographer, and he was really into these desert trees.

Bryce Canyon is way out there on the right. In real life, those rocks look almost pink as opposed to the brownish redish orange rocks at Kodachrome.

We finally saw the elusive Kodachrome cows on our drive out of the park! Not a bad way to end a great weekend.

Thanks for reading through this photo journey of another national park adventure. Next up is our first Utah camping trip, which is also somehow my first ever camping trip. Love and miss you all!

April Adventures

March Updates