Are you ready for some HOODOOS! – Bryce Canyon

Photo albums: Click here for our Canyonlands album, here for Capitol Reef, and here for Bryce Canyon!

Our journey west through southern Utah’s canyon country continued with a visit to Bryce Canyon National Park.  Bryce Canyon is known for its hoodoos – huge limestone pillars left standing after rain and freeze-thaw cycles eroded away the surrounding rock.  But first, after seven straight nights of camping in Canyonlands and Capitol Reef, we took a short breather by staying in a $55 motel near Bryce Canyon.  On Wednesday we did a great day hike through the hoodoos, the 5-mile Peek-a-boo loop. All the hikes in Bryce start at the canyon rim and go down to the canyon floor, then they climb back up to the rim.  The Peek-a-boo loop had awesome views of hoodoos, arches, bridges, and some pretty steep switchbacks.

On our climb back up, we had the first snow of our entire trip!  It’s kind of surprising that we’ve managed to avoid snow so far, especially since we spent so much time in Alaska and Colorado; apparently we’ve managed to stay just south enough to miss it.  Unfortunately we didn’t really realize that Bryce canyon was so high (9000’), and that it turned out to be significantly colder than the rest of southern Utah.  That night we camped at the North Campground.  We knew it was going to be cold, but 14 degrees overnight was just about our limit!  The temperature dropped as low as 18 degrees in Denali, but the 18+ hours of daily sunlight helped us to warm up quickly on that trip.  In Bryce in late October, we only got 11 hours of sunlight per day with highs in the low 40s. Needless to say, after one night of freezing our butts off in the tent, we bailed from the campground back to our cheap (and clean!) motel.

We did another long day hike, the 8-mile Fairyland loop.  This hike took us through more hoodoos and near a formation called the Sinking Ship.

After this hike, we went to an evening Ranger talk on global warming, followed by an astronomy evening at the Visitor Center.  The Rangers had four telescopes set up for some stargazing – we saw Neptune, the moon up close, and various globular clusters and nebulas in the clear black sky.

Our last hike in Bryce Canyon was the short Navajo loop. This hike had a dramatic descent past the Wall Street formation and close-up views of Thor’s Hammer.  The weather stayed clear (though cold and windy) for our last few hikes.  Bryce was a great trip with some truly amazing geology.

From Bryce we drove out to St. George, UT, in the southwest corner of the state.  We are taking a weekend to lay low, stay in a hotel, and get some laundry done.  The added benefit of spending this weekend in town is that we get to dodge the weekend national park crowds.  On Monday we are headed to Zion National Park, where we are planning some canyon hiking trips – hopefully it’s a little warmer than Bryce!

Capitol Reef

We arrived at Capitol Reef on a busy Saturday and were lucky to find a campsite in Fruita.  Fruita was a Mormon frontier community settled in the 1880s. There were remnants of the buildings and the fruit orchards in the lush valley. On our first day we hiked along the Fremont Gorge Overlook trail and found panoramic views of the surrounding area. The geology was amazing here!

We attended the very last Ranger evening program at the campground of the park. We learned a lot about the geology and the formation of the park. We also found out that we needed to go to the Gifford Farmhouse, next to the campground, in the morning for a traditional Capitol Reef breakfast pie.

We were almost the first in line on that Sunday and ate a delicious mixed berry pie, lemon poppy seed scone and coffee for breakfast! On our second day we decided to get away from the crowds and explore the southern part of the park. The ranger at the visitors center sent us to a cool canyon called Headquarters Canyon. The color of the rock was amazing with horizontal stripes of red and a short slot canyon the opened up to huge vertical walls.

From there we drove up and over the Burr Trail Switchbacks to the trail head at the upper Muley Twist Canyon. We hiked along the 4x4 road for about 2 ½ miles to the Strike Valley Overlook. The views of the reef and the Waterpocket Fold were absolutely breathtaking. This quickly became our favorite place in the park.

On our third day we let our legs “rest” and hiked a short distance to Hickman Bridge.

We thought Capitol Reef was a great place and you should all visit if you haven’t yet.

Canyonlands

From Salt Lake we headed 6 hours south to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. We picked up our backcountry permit and headed to Hamburger Rock, a BLM campground just outside of the park.  This campsite had the most spectacular stargazing we’ve ever seen.  There were no city lights for at least 50 miles, we had a new moon, and the Orionid meteor shower gave us at least a dozen shooting stars.  (A fellow camper, Jeff from Boston, gave the campground an informal astronomy talk that evening.)   In the middle of the night the winds kicked up and showered us with sand while we were trying to sleep in the tent. We awoke to a fine red sandy grit covering everything!

We hadn’t been backpacking since our Maroon Bells trip in September, so we were anxious to do another backpacking trip in the desert. We decided on a three-day trip into the Needles district. Hiking in Canyonlands was a new experience. The majority of the trail was on slickrock hiking from cairns to cairns or in sand and loose rock on a river bed. The cairns were essential to route finding as the landscape looked so similar in some places that it’s easy to see how someone could get lost.

The weather was perfect - sunny and warm with highs in the high 70s and overnight lows in the 40s. Our first night we spent in the Chesler Park area with sweeping views of the skyline, huge pillars/needles in clusters and grass land surrounding us.

Our first campsite didn’t have any water, so we carried extra water in and hoped that we found water on the second day (which we did). The route for the second day brought us around the needles, up and down/ in and out of canyons, and at times we had to climb ladders to scale the rock. At the second campsite in the Lost Canyon area we were tucked in a canyon, which meant we lost the sun early that day. In the Lost Canyon area it felt more lush with yellow cottonwoods but water was still scarce. In total we hiked about 20 miles over 3 days and of course had a ton of fun together!

When we got back to the car (and after enjoying an Izze and a homemade chocolate chip cookie) we decided that we should drive half way to our next destination, Capitol Reef National Park. We finally found a place to pitch the tent in a deserted campground near Lake Powell.

Late fall in Steamboat Springs - SLC - Lisa in Orlando

Click Here for our Steamboat album!

The fall color peak in Steamboat had passed, but that meant he days were sunny with blue skies and the smells of fall were in the air. Shoulder season meant we got a killer deal on a suite at the Steamboat Grand with a full kitchen as we were looking forward to a home cooked meal with Julie. Of course we were on the lookout of great eats and Steamboat delivered. We enjoyed delicious meals at the dipping grill, soup and sandwiches at Backcountry Provisions and a Mexican lunch at Rio Grande before we hit the road.

Disc golf in Steamboat

Fish Creek Falls

Biking along the Yampa River

On our first day we found the local disc golf course and hiked to Fish Creek falls. Ryan had found a fun event in the local paper for Saturday. It was the 6th Annual Mustache Ride to benefit the local humane society. We met the local crowd at the top of a hill in a residential area near the mountain. As instructed we were all sporting a mustache – Ryan’s was all natural, and Lisa and Julie needed some artificial enhancements. We road our bikes down the hill to the first bar in the series of the pub crawl. After our $2 PBR, some people watching, and lots of laughter we decided to move on with our day and biked along the path that followed the Yampa River.

On our last night we ate our yummy home cooked meal: Julie’s famous slows cooked ribs, twice baked potatoes, and asparagus. We had a wonderful relaxing and fun filled weekend with Julie in a beautiful fall setting. From Steamboat we were off to Salt Lake City.

In Salt Lake we were welcomed by Mark and Becky Bibler and their family. They gave us the grand tour of the surrounding area. We got our exercise biking 22 miles along the bike path that connects the cities along the base of the Wasatch Mountains. We are now proud owners of a Costco membership again that will come in handy in the near future. Dinning at The Red Iguana was a must and delicious as were our first taste of a Mormon Muffin. We met up with Lisa’s friend Justin in Park City one evening for a tour of the Olympic ski team training center (Justin in an athletic trainer for a part of the ski team) and a sushi dinner. Just another reason we love traveling is that we get to catch up with friends and family!

Lisa was off to sunny Orlando Florida for the National Cystic Fibrosis Conference where she was presenting a poster on work her, fellow PT and MD put together while we were in New Hampshire. Ryan stayed in Salt Lake and interviewed at the University of Utah for a fellowship position in Pulmonary and Critical Care. Lisa had an amazing time reconnecting with the CF team from Dartmouth and learned lots of information especially related to exercise for patients with CF, and the poster presentation went really well too.

Lots of plans from here: today we take off for Canyonlands National Park and are hoping to do about a three-day backpacking trip in the Needles district.  We will head west across southern Utah and hit the other national parks: Capitol Reef, Bryce, and Zion.  We are planning five nights in Zion and some of the classic canyon routes including the Narrows and the Subway.  From there we head to Vegas where we’re staying at the Flamingo and seeing some shows, then we head further south to San Diego to fly to Hawaii!

Great Sand Dunes and Penitente Canyon

Here is the link for our latest album..

After along travel day we arrived at the Great Sand Dunes National Park late and made camp in the dark. In the morning it was quite the surprise to Lisa, who had never seen the dunes, to wake up to a landscape that seemed out of this world. The Great Sand Dunes are in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and are next to the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. The dunes take up 30 square miles and are the tallest dunes in North America. We had a great time climbing the dunes which was quite challenging, it felt like one step forward and two steps back. We had to climb up quite a ways to get a sweeping view of the expansiveness of the area and where the dunes meet the mountains. It was like a sunny day on the beach but without the ocean and in the middle of southern Colorado! There are two creeks that run around the dunes for three months in the spring (April-June) and it would a lot of fun to go back then.

After our sand dunes adventure we drove across the valley to Penitente Canyon. Ryan had been waiting for and dreaming of this day for years. He had visited Penitente in 2006 with friends from medical school but only for one day of climbing. The canyon has over 300 sport climbing routes, not to mention the additional routes in the small canyons around it. We had a great camping spot, close to the entrance to the canyon and fairly isolated from other campers (of note, there is no water at the campground). It had been a long time since we both had climbed outside. Ryan remembered his slab climbing skills fairly quickly while Lisa will need some extra time. We hiked, biked and trail ran around the area and had a great time over the three days that we were there. From Penitente we headed north, across the state of Colorado to spend the weekend in Steamboat Springs.

Moonrise over Penitente

the Virgin Wall

The Southwest - Santa Fe and El Paso

Click here for our Santa Fe and El Paso pictures!

Santa Fe welcomed us to beautiful fall weather in the desert. We found a nice motel, the Santa Fe Motel and Inn, which was just a short walk to the plaza with nice quaint southwestern charm and a hot breakfast (that included green chili for the eggs). We spent our days touring the plaza, shops, art galleries on Canyon Road, and museums (Georgia O’Keeffe of course).

the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Outdoor sculptures in Santa Fe

Of course we sought out the best southwestern cuisine.  Casa Chimayo was a hit on our first night with traditional southwestern dishes that included a wonderful mole sauce. We hit the Coyote Cantina for lunch, a little pricey but the outdoor roof top was just want we wanted. Another favorite was Maria’s, off the beaten path, but a great local hang out (rumor has it that Robert Redford has a favorite table there). Maria’s cuisine was deliciously spicy, and they featured Tequila tastings which Ryan indulged in. The margaritas were pretty potent too. On our last night we enjoyed dinner at La Boca, a Spanish tapas restaurant. We opted for the chef to pick our five dishes as they all sounded so good. He did a great job, pairing seared tuna, fresh salmon, shrimp, steak, and oxtail with different ingredients that enlightened our palates. Of course we also found a few breweries: Marble Tap house (which had shuffle board- Lisa won!) and the Second Street Brewery at the Depot, both of which we liked. We were lucky to be there for a weekday Farmer’s Market where we sampled the roasted chilies and other fall crops.

We took one day and drove to Taos for a day hike and to check out the ski hill. The hike up Italiano Canyon was just okay as there were not many views of the fall colors and surrounding mountains as we had hoped, but it was a good day to burn a few calories.

Italiano Canyon hike near Taos

Sunset over Santa Fe

Our good friends Miranda and Keagan and their almost two year old son Corban moved to El Paso Texas from Vermont at the beginning of the summer.  When we realized El Paso was just five hours from Santa Fe, we decided to drive through the state of New Mexico to visit them. We brought rain (and lots of it) with us to El Paso, as our Vermont friends asked us for. We had a great weekend dining on Texas style BBQ and our own home cooked Mexican meal.

On Saturday we explored Hueco Tanks State Park, famous for world class bouldering so Ryan was really excited. We saw some amazing parts of the park and pictographs on our guided tour. In the afternoon we explored some of the park on our own and Ryan was able to boulder. The huecos are rounded out holes in the rock where the Indians would collect water. The cool thing was that we were there after a storm so the huecos had water in them. It was a fun weekend with dear friends.

Hueco Tanks SP

From El Paso we headed back north to the Great Sand Dunes in Southern CO.  More to come soon!