Utah: Bryce Canyon National Park

 Wednesday night we drove south to Bryce Canyon National Park. Early Thursday morning we were up for sunrise at the canyon rim. We took the Queens Garden Trail to Navaho Loop and back up along the Rim Trail. It was beautiful. Awesome. Great light. Very cool park.

With me still limping along, Matt went on a trail run by himself again that evening, doing the Fairyland Loop, which is 8 miles and goes from 7100ft to 8200ft. That’s intense at 8 minute miles. It looked beautiful, but I’m glad I wasn’t a part of it!

As a side note, if you’re ever going to Bryce Canyon, the town of Bryce is all owned by one place…3 hotels, one general store, one terrible restaurant…all rip-offs. They all started with the name ‘Ruby’s’ and I decided the call the town Ruby’s Racket. So don’t linger. Or camp or something. And bring food. 

Utah: Capitol Reef National Park

Sunday evening we took leave of Ashley, Steven, and the rest and made our way two hours south west to Torrey, Utah. It’s just outside Capitol Reef National Park, and we found ourselves in the uninspiring, but cheap, Aquarius Motel for three nights. Utah is on Mountain time, which meant being ‘at work’ at 8am Pacific gave us until 9am Utah. We got ourselves up at 5:30 most mornings and got some nice hikes in. We spent the day times working, dinner in the evenings, and early to bed.

Monday we hiked Chimney Rock Loop

Tuesday was Cassidy Arch. Which was neat…because you could stand on it. It was also Matt’s birthday, so we hung out in the pool, went out to dinner, and even found a bottle of Ken Forrester wine, which was our favorite tiny winery in South Africa last summer. Who knows what it was doing in Torrey, Utah.

Rattlesnake cakes. For real.

Wednesday, my mountain biking injuries from the prior weekend were rather sore and swollen, and I decided they would be better off with a break. I took an early meeting, while Matt did a long trail run on Cooks Mesa. It looked neat.