Wild-West Road-Trip: Bryce Canyon and the road to Zion

On travel days, we all have to do our part to make sure that the camp is clean, organized, and ready for the road. Today, that meant washing dishes and getting the kids on board for some activities so Jen could do some laundry. I know it’s not glorious, but the logistics involved in keeping this machine moving are fairly involved.

Anyway, the kids and I went back to Bryce Canyon so we could get our National Park Passports stamped before heading out to another lookout: Inspiration Point. When we got to the top of the rim, I had a few moments to get some pictures before Addy insisted that we get out of the sun.

We picked up Jen and the laundry and then headed to a Utah State Park: the Kodachrome Basin. I was pretty excited about seeing this park. The whole deal with Kodak's legendary film stock was that it reproduced colors in nature in a way that left its signature on the prints. Reds were ruddy and saturated, Yellows were burnt, and blue skies exposed correctly could deliver a hue that looked even better than the real thing.

The park, having been named by National Geographic years ago, may harness all of those powerful colors during some of the seasons, but none of the flowering plants were displaying anything especially beautiful. Likewise, there was a generous haze in the air that is simply incurable unless one would choose a better time of the day to make pictures.

One feature that was present in the park was the twisted and splayed nature of the dead trees marking turns in the trail that wound in a loop back to the parking lot. We did make lunch after walking through the scenery, and then it was on to Zion.

Once we reached Zion, it became really obvious that this park has some of the most spectacular views. In fact, every time I turned the corner, there was another amazing facade to marvel at. We even got to drive through a tunnel that was constructed straight through the heart of the mountain. It was, by far, the greatest stone tunnel that I have ever seen.

By the way, it was one-hundred and eight degrees outside in the park, today. That’s kind of insane. I did not get out to walk around at any of the crowded pull-off sections on the side of the road. Instead, I used my Snapchat Specs to take a few moments of video to pass along to people who are kind enough to add me on that app. I downloaded a few of those video-snaps to feature here, just in case you were thinking that you missed it. 

Anyway, thank you, again, for reading this and for thinking about us on our trip! I’ll be in touch as much as I can. No matter what, take care!

- Wayne