National Park Overload, Part III

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As we left Zion, I had the feeling we were leaving too soon. Springdale was such a sweet village with an idyllic setting, Bryce couldn't beat this! Curiously, Bryce Canyon sits only 60 or 70 miles from Zion, yet enjoys only a fraction of the latter's visitors. I wondered why this might be.

My car was acting up, so even as we drove through Dixie National Forest I fought the urge to pull over for photographs. I knew that my parents shared the same notion, but I had that drive that a car's strange behavior will sometimes engender in a pilot: the need to keep going. Dixie National Forest was hardly a forest, but she was a garden of bright orange hoodoos. Against the green pines her pillars rose brilliant! For those of you who have no idea what I mean when I write hoodoo, or for those of you who have seen them but never read further, here is a quick descrip: not to be confused with the corrupted term for some traditional African magic, from the Ewe 'hudu', a hoodoo appears like a totem, a rocky finger that rises from the dry earth, sometimes solitary, sometimes in a handful, they form what is left behind after erosion. The wikipedia entry goes "hoodoos are tall thin spires of rock that portrude from the bottom of arid basins and badlands" and remain because a layer of harder rock sits upon the top.

But I did not stop, and soon, one by one, the emergency icons on my dashboard lit up. Although this was seemed merely strange, I was alarmed, and still checked the manual as I drove, wondering how my airbags went out directly after my anti-lock brake system failed. Then my power steering and brakes failed (my last car had power nothing at all so this was not totally alarming). Then the dials on my speedometer and odometer fell to zero, and all the numbers on the dash read eights. Can you guess what terrible poltergeist was possessing my car? I certainly could not have. We jumped the battery (because upon trying to restart the ignition after this traumatic breakdown, the death of the battery was apparent) and I was able to continue. Then it all happened again, but faster, and the disability of certain systems was evident (I was not really able to steer at this point), so I pulled over and refused to drive more. Can you guess yet? No worries, we called AAA, the greatest organization in the country (ask me my Valentine's Day story about them sometime), and I had pulled over exactly within 5 miles of the nearest approved towing facility (which means I was towed for free).

The treat here is that the towing faciltiy, and complete auto-repair shop, was attached to our hotel, so it was then that we learned that the Ruby's Inn at Bryce Canyon operates like a small town- they have a restaurant (the only one open that serves real food within a 20 miles radius- and that's generous, others might say 50 miles, and still others might argue that the food at Ruby's doesn't fulfill certain nutritional guidelines), a post office, a liquor store, an auto-body repair shop, beauty parlor, film processing shop, and even a small strip mall open after Memorial Day. However as of Memorial Day, those other restaurants in a 50 mile radius open for the season.

So Darrell, a kind (possibly Mormon) mechanic, who brought his young son in the tow truck, took my car away to Ruby's and we followed. Are you ready? Within two minutes of easing my car off the truck, Darrell walked over to let me know the alternator was done. And of course it was, most don't last over one hundred thousand miles, so the fact that this one lasted 115 is dumb luck. Especially considering my parents were around for the two days it took for him to get in the part. But you don't really care about my car trouble, do you? At least you know now that when a ghost seems to have hijacked your car's electronics, and then it slowly dies, you have me to thank that you know the alternator is spent.

All I am going to tell you about the restaurant we selected for dinner that night is to not custom the Foster's Family Steakhouse if you find yourself at Bryce Canyon. Not only does the owner feel it necessary to tack on the wall a "poem" by a congressmen who fancies himself rhymer enough to construct metered phrases on the godless heresy of abortions and other unpoetic trite abused by certain seekers of Jesus' love, and spends more time ordering the Mormon book in every possible tourist language than he does getting fresh fish, but he didn't bother to instruct his manager on what constitutes a filet mignon. That'll do, eh?

The next morning we awoke an hour or two after dawn to breakfast and headed out for some serious hiking. Our books recommended only a couple of picturesque routes possible within a day's time. The trails are divided into backpacking length, day length, and wimpy short. To select the best of the middle option, we inquired at the visitor's center. A young ranger who was far too cute to be Mormon (groups that have no choice but to interbreed are commonly homely, look at the royals- no offense, Brits, kisses!), and far too devoted to the park, an observation obvious once we spoke with him, recommended a figure-eight of popular shorter trails. How ingenious! By beginning at the Navajo loop, a steep downhill into the Bryce Canyon amphitheater (they call the basin that, wish I could tell you why this one gets the designation and Canyonlands didn't, but I think it has something to do with how gradual the descent is to the bottom), you can connect to the Peek-a-boo loop, which meets up with the Queen's Landing trail for a pleasant and more gradual up-hill out of the amphitheater, and then an easy Rim walk will escort you back to your car, all in a pleasant seven miles or so.

Now, here's what I've been waiting to dish: the entire amphitheater of this canyon is full of the natural wonder that enthralled me so at Dixie National Forest: the canyon is full of the bright orange hoodoos! This hole in the earth was first claimed by early Mormons (I believe the basin is too arid to have sustained other peoples before, so only wildlife fill the canyon, however plenty of people lived on the plateau and must have been "displaced" once the Mormons claimed the land for themselves), and the Department of the Interior made a Park out of it, but it has remained mostly untouched, reminding us of the oddness of geology. The inside of the basin is primarily sandstone, with that dense upper crust of something on top- the perfect condition for hoodoos. Two hundred days of the year, the canyon experiences a temperature shift between freezing (32 fahrenheit, 0 celsius) and above. This incredible consistency causes regular cracking in the rock. Over time, many of these fissures destabilize part of the rock tower, which falls. What remains is still tall, but thin, skinnier.

I looked out at the canyon before me. The morning sun was not spectacularly bright, but the blue of the sky gave that stark contrast, and it took my breath away. What a cool planet we live on! The layers of the canyon were displayed in varying concentrations of red- from the orange hoodoos, to the ecru floor, and segments of red that circled the walls at the same height for miles. The legend of the area (I would put my money on Paiutes here) is that long ago, Coyote became angry with all of the people and animals of the canyon. Coyote turned every one of them into stone, no matter what they were up to at that moment. If you look at the hoodoos, you can still see the figures of the people that were there before us. Some are stooped, some are reaching up, some are animals running. What a legend! And it's true that the hoodoos are original, every one, with characteristic bulges and shapes.

The figure-eight trail was perfect. I was not challenged for any of the trail, but it was nice to explore the region with my parents, who were not as acclimatized to the altitude (the park sits over a mile above sea level), and are obviously older- but in great shape! We walked through every accessible part of the canyon, and the Peek-a-boo trail is certainly on my suggested list- it winds through rock passages and windows, to the extent that you seem familiarized with a fantasy world of bright colors and other-planetary terrain, before meeting up with Queen's Landing for a nice ascent back to Earth.

Although I can't speak for Summer months, another plus for this Park was how unpopulated it was- there were tourists, but nothing compared to the big names. And what a place to feel you have to yourself!

The next day I woke well before dawn so we could watch the sunrise from inside the park. The enthusiastic young ranger had told us that because most of the interesting vistas of the park face East, the best viewing is at sunrise. Again, he made so much sense, we listened, and drove to Bryce Point for sunrise. In the parking lot, an older South Asian woman was dancing energetically to her headphones, and smiled at us while making a great stroke with her arms. She aerobicized gracefully. At the Point, an American tourist, a Dutch tourist, two American photographers, and two other photographers (who it turned out were with the dancing woman), were all standing at their tripods waiting for the sun to rise brilliantly. It did not.

After twenty minutes of standing around trying to stave off numbness, the serious photographers packed up their things and told each other "tomorrow," so we assumed that the sun had reached a point beyond any that would offer pretty colors, and we, too, turned back to the car. After breakfast we returned to the Park, but by then a blizzard was already brewing, and we opted out of more hiking. Exploring the other scenic vistas by car was amusing, however, and we filled another hour or two looking out at the many canyons and creeks- even though the light was poor for the quality of our cameras, reading the Learning Plaques, and taking pictures of ravens.

I had never gotten that close to the bird before, but was rather intrigued by the large raptor, which was busy fluffing its feathers and making one of its noises. The great bird would lower its head, puff its neck, and open its beak just a bit and exit two fairly metallic sounding notes of the same pitch. It seemed to be purging the notes, based on what it went through to emit them. I took a lot of pictures, and had fewer people been around, I would have attempted to communicate.

Bryce Canyon is an incredible piece of land. I heard from others we spoke to along the trail that for some who had seen much of the world, this spot remained the most captivating. I don't usually say that civilization betters an area, but if it brings a balance (to upset the dominance of the Mormons) like it could here, I'd support it. The isolation of this area is a hindrance, because it serves a purpose for the permanent population, thus I surmise that a lot of planning and packing is in order to make a diverting stay of it.