So. We're staying at a motel. And motels are motels. Unfortunately (or fortunately), our hotel in Moab was just awesome (Homewood Suites by Hilton). This motel (America's Best Inn and Suites) is a bit anticlimactic, at the very least.
Not the best night's sleep - too cold, too hot, the mattress is way too soft (even for me), plus the toilet randomly gurgles at inconvenient times (e.g. just as you're finally dozing off).
Really nice flat screen TV - but we are struggling to figure out how to control the volume. This should be fairly obvious, even on the most complicated of remote control devices, but for some reason it is not.
Anyway.
Breakfast is a motel breakfast affair - which is fine, but somehow disappointing that there is no waffle maker. There is a pancake maker, yey! Except it seems to be malfunctioning. We also noticed that we are the only English speaking people in the room - everybody else seems to be chatting away in Italian or French.
After breakfast, we continue on to our first day at Bryce Canyon, doing what is now our routine "first day at a park" thing - show up at the Visitor's Center and talk to the Ranger because we don't have a clue.
Good news! Unlike the Visitor's Center at Canyonlands, this one has actual flush toilets. And unlike Arches and Canyonlands, there is a lodge and restaurant that is easy to get to, so we don't have to bring lunch with us (lunches in the last two parks have been leftovers from dinner the night before). Plus since it's not un-G0dly hot out, we don't need to bring a gallon of water - we still need to stay hydrated (we are now at 8,000+ feet), but no need to chug 2 quarts of water by noon.
First on the list is a Ranger walk at 10:30 a.m., which turns out to be the same walk we would have taken ourselves - Bristlecomb Loop Trail to Rainbow Point. The Ranger described the kinds of trees in the area - the bristle comb pine trees can live up to 5,000 years; many of the trees in the park are 1,200 years or older:
I'm able to keep up with them for a while, but the second half of the loop seems to be 100% uphill and we lose them. We catch up with them literally at the end of the walk. We chatted with the Ranger about other things - I wanted to know the reality of 2 hikes listed as "easy". She confirmed that in fact they were not, and gave a couple of other suggestions instead.
Basically what we did was to drive to the very end of the park (18 miles) to do this walk. We then headed back in the direction of the Visitor's Center to stop at every viewpoint along the way.
All of them were great - not quite as spectacular as the Grand Canyon (I don't think anything will top that), but still gorgeous. Our "plan" (if you can call it that) was to stop at over looks until we got to the lodge, where we would stop for lunch.
Here are highlights of the many overlooks:
Natural Bridge (which is technically an arch)
What we thought was the amphitheater, but was not:
Then suddenly a thunderstorm blew in and the skies opened, just in time for lunch. Fortunately I had brought along rain ponchos, so we were somewhat less wet than everybody else huddled in the lodge until the rain stopped.
We made a couple more stops - two of them were blocked off because the parking lots were full. Our alternatives were - try to take the bus to see these stops and then not make it in time for the Ranger program at the Visitor's center at 5:00. Or just drive back to the Visitor's center for the Ranger program and kill some time.
Which is what we did. We watched the "welcome to Bryce Canyon" movie.
The Ranger talk was supposed to be outside, but apparently she had heard thunder when she went to the venue, so the program had to be moved inside to the theater.
Turns out the Ranger is not a Ranger - she is a college intern in astronomy here at Bryce Canyon for the summer. She talked about how to use a planisphere and she did a great job. This is the planisphere we used:
Miller Planisphere
After the program, we drove back to one of the blocked off stops - Inspiration Point - which was now open.
By the time we got there, the skies had opened up again. We sat in the car until it seemed to have slacked off. But, the walk up to the viewpoint was long and steep and the wind had kicked up - the combo was enough to send me back to the car to wait, while Andy went up to take this photo of Inspiration Point:
We were done for the day after that. Googling restaurants in the area brought up one called the Stone Hearth Grille. It was not far from our motel - hidden around the corner and under a bush, but terrific. If you ever happen to be in Tropic, UT, we highly recommend this restaurant.
Tomorrow: Check out in the morning, complete a few things left undone and then the 2 hour drive to Zion. MOST IMPORTANT THING: get there, check in, have dinner in time for Game of Thrones at 9:00.
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