Lessons learned from a first trip to Bryce and Zion National Parks

Go!  They’re spectacular. Around 8800 feet, the air gets thinner and the hiking gets harder.  It might have been helpful for a flatlander like me to start at Zion NP (which is lower) before going up to Bryce.  Then again, it might not have.  I’m told you can’t acclimate to such a big altitude change [...]

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Most visited national parks?

The handouts I picked up in Zion National Park made a big point of the fact that it is one of top ten most visited U.S. national parks. This surprised me, as I don’t remember having heard about it growing up, and knew very little about it until relatively recently.  According to the National Parks [...]

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The drive through Dixie

Day 3 – May 7 – Late morning It was literally freezing out when we took our sunrise stroll to Sunset Point (the temperature dropped to 18 degrees overnight), and Maris’ allergies were making her miserable.  So we retreated to the lodge for a warm breakfast and then decided to take the two-hour drive to [...]

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“The sober mind is a powerful thing”: Hoodoos at sunrise

Day 3 – May 7 – 6:25 a.m. People kept talking about the spectacular color changes that hoodoos undergo at sunrise and sunset, so Maris and I decided we should check it out early on Day 3.  Figuring we’d be stumbling through one of the darkest places in the U.S., we went to the general store [...]

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Dark Rangers

Day 2:  May 6 – Night Bryce Canyon has one of the darkest night skies left in the United States, and the park is known for its astronomy programs. We were there at the wrong time of month for their well-known full-moon walk–which turned out  just as well, as people typically line up at 5:30 or 6 in [...]

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Orange, orange everywhere: Mossy Cave Trail

Day 2:  May 6 – Afternoon In the afternoon, we went to the north side of the park and took an easy hike along the Mossy Cave Trail.  In contrast to all our other stops in Bryce, where the only water around was snow and the mud it created as it melted, this trail ran [...]

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The road through Bryce Canyon: Views from the south

Day 2:  May 6 – Morning       Just from the bit of hiking we did on the Rim Trail when we first arrived, Maris and I quickly discovered that we were not prepared for significant inclines at Bryce.  Frankly, we were surprised and disappointed.  We’ve been hiking in plenty of mountainous national parks before and had never [...]

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Arriving at Bryce

Day 1 – May 5 – 4 p.m. Utah Time Roughly 4.5 hour after leaving Vegas, Maris and I arrived at Bryce Canyon Lodge, where a clock labeled “Utah Time” surprised us.  We didn’t realize that Vegas was on Pacific time and that we had changed to Mountain Time as we left Nevada–a common error, [...]

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Dynamic range

Welcome to Alyeska Journal 2.0. In honor of the end of my entries about Alaska, and the beginning of postings about Utah, I’ve changed the appearance of the blog—from the Mistylook theme to Sunburn.  The Journal still explores alyeska (the great land), but we’re no longer cruising near the 60th parallel. The title for today’s post comes from a [...]

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