With only two weeks left to explore the southwest before commitments dictated our eastward migration we departed Sedona with our sights set on visiting; Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, Zion NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Kodachrome SP, and Canyonlands NP.
Katie and I have visited Zion several times over the past 8 years and we’ve hiked most of the popular trails with Angels Landing being one of our favorites. So with the student and teacher deciding to spend the day in session at the campsite I took off on my bike and rode from the campground to the Angles Landing trail-head. At the base of the trail I met Thomas, a fellow from Germany who was on a three week hiking – mt biking trip of the southwest. We spent the afternoon hiking the trail together. To put it mildly the Angles Landing trail is not for those fearful of heights, over the last 15 years close to a dozen folks took an unintended 2 second free-fall off the trail without a parachute. The falling part was fine it was the negative acceleration from terminal velocity to zero in less than an inch that got’em.
One of the numerous unexpected highlights during our two week foray was Bryce Canyon National Park. Katie and I had visited Bryce back in 1992 while traveling from our home in Colorado to visit Maui via San Diego. At that time we drove thru the park for a few hours stopping at the typical overlooks not venturing into the canyon itself. This time we had planned a one night stay which morphed into several as we hike, biked and spent much more time enjoying the park.
Bryce has a free network of bus service which we took advantage of on one of our hikes into the canyon. From the campground we rode our bikes to Sunset Point overlook then hopped on a bus which deposited us at Bryce Point overlook, from there we did a one way three hour hike down into the canyon and back up to Sunset Point.
Kodachrome State Park was only an hour drive from Bryce and was our next stop, again an unexpected highlight especially the parks camping facilities. Our initial plan was to stay one night we ended ups spending two, in addition to the great mt biking trails were the showers located right next to our campsite (I’ll eventually be posting a video on my work in progress YouTube channel).
Our last full day we did a hike in Canyonlands National Park then drove north thru Moab spending our last night camping next to the Colorado River just east of Moab.
Next stop Maine, see you there.