Day 13 – Nothing but the sky above & the river below (Bryce Canyon & Zion)

Thanks to the weather gods, who blew the forest fire smoke into a different direction today, we didn’t have to cancel our plans visiting two amazing parks after all, but because we had made alternate plans we squeezed a 2.5 day visit into 1.

At first glance, the parks have a lot in common: they’re close to each other in Utah, very popular and well developed, which includes not just fancier trails and water filling stations, but also operating a shuttle service to most of the trail heads. Yet already on the drive in the parks are very distinct and not to be mistaken for another. And this was also reflected in our hikes, which could not have been any more different: in Bryce Canyon we hiked the Rim Trail from Bryce Point to Inspiration Point — beautiful views and grand panoramic vistas, as the whole landscape of cliffs and hoodoos unfolded below us… in Zion we hiked the Riverside trail to the Narrows, at the bottom of the valley along the Virgin River with walls of stone and cliffs stretching up to the sky above us, the beautiful cold stream of water gurgling next to us the whole while, until we had to ford it a few times to continue our path…

Air + Water, sun + stone + sand, plants + animals = a great park experience

The trail in Bryce afforded us the blue sky we had not seen most of the previous day, and introduced us to two very mysterious and elusive creatures (to be discussed in a separate post) – the golden mantled ground squirrel and the hiking leopold: both notoriously difficult to capture on film…!

Bryce Canyon rim trail

Hoodoos

Hoodoos

Inspiration point overlook

Bryce Canyon rim trail

Precarious balance

Bryce Canyon rim trail

Hoodoos

After recharging our batteries with lunch at the Lodge in Bryce Canyon, we drove off to part two of the adventure: Zion. There, we were first greeted by a friendly park ranger – and then by a daring herd of desert bighorn sheep (not goats)…

Desert bighorn sheep

Avid climber

Climbing down to the valley

Desert bighorn sheep

Scaling slippery slopes

We loved the different perspective the park provided viewing the scenery from the valley floor instead of the mountain top. It was also great to come out of a mile long tunnel and see Zion in its full glory (as soon as our eyes adjusted to the bright light)

This gives new meaning to the “light at the end of the tunnel”

Last light at Temple of Sinawava

Bill & the Bighorns

Though the best part by far was taking the shuttle to the very last stop and then hiking off into the sunset (or so I think – we couldn’t really see the sun anymore because the valley was to deep!)  The peace & serenity of the hike is hard to put into words / images, but I can describe the incredible rejuvenation of my poor, sore limbs, when we started fording the quite cold Virgin River: it was like the first sip of coffee in the morning, when you slowly start making sense of the day and your body and mind catch up with each other.  Really, it was that good. Just try it for yourself 🙂

Fording the Virgin River

View of the Narrows

Water wading for the daring

Starting off into the Narrows

yup, this is the only path

…and one more time