June 5, 2004 - Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah--Day 1, continued
Well, dang. The shuttle comes to the Sunset Point too, and it's only a half mile more. How your feet doing, Barb? Fine? OK, we're off, being careful (REAL careful) to stay on the trail.
Well, that's a pretty strange foot rest, and frankly, her feet are beginning to look a little dirty by now. And she caught me resting, in spite of the fact I was just enjoying the incredible view.
Yeah, there's flowers on the edge of the rim, and there goes Inspiration Point into the past. We've still got another hour or so before the last shuttle, so we're cruising.
Do you see Barb's alligator in the top left photo? Back to reality, it's said the rim is receding at the rate of a foot every 60 years. This hardy bristlecone pine will eventually end up in the bottom, but probably not in my lifetime. As you can see, it's hanging on for dear life!
As we walked along, we could see lots of trails at the bottom of the canyon, and wondered if/how we could get down to them. Then we saw this series of switchbacks, and saw at least one way down. Of course, back up would be a real "puffer," but taking stops to catch our breath isn't something we're unfamiliar with. We do it a lot.
What's with this? They water the plants here? What happened to good old Ma Nature? Since we couldn't see the other end of the hose, we never did find out. And that sign about the Navajo Loop is apparently the way down. And back up. As she saw the sign, Barb said, "Oh, it's only 1.3 miles, that's not bad." At that point there happened to be a very red-faced, very sweaty young man walking past, and he said, "Easy for you to say!" with a grin on his face. Yeah, baby, that's a steep one. 516 feet elevation in those little switchbacks.
HA! So Barb isn't the only person who sees characters in the rocks below us. Me? I mostly still just see rocks. Pretty ones, unusual ones, fascinating ones, but still just rocks.
Like I said, just rocks. But noteworthy rocks, eh? If nobody has ever told you that you need to come see this for yourself, let us be the first to tell you, "You gotta come see this for yourself!" And if others have already told you that, let us add our names to the list, OK? You really have to come see this for yourself, if you possibly can. The walking we do is optional, you can still see a lot of the beauty if you don't get around very well.
Well, we got to Sunrise Point, and sure enough, the sign on this end says that Sunset Point is "only" a half mile away. Barb's feet are really getting dirty at this point, and my tennies aren't wanting to do much more walking today either.
We're glad we walked this far, and with 40 minutes to go before the bus arrives, we took a few more photos and then headed to the bus stop. Only we took a wrong trail, and ended up backtracking to the Lodge where we did (thank goodness) manage to catch the last bus for home.
Yup. Dirty feet. Too dirty to go inside, so I played water-boy and she played scrub-woman. Even her flip-flops got a bath.
We're pretty close to the road as it is, but at least this is home for a few days. And see the distance between the body of the Road Abode and the tire? There isn't any! The coach is sitting on the tire. That exhaust in front of the tire is for the generator, and the one behind the tire is for the Aqua-Hot system.
And the distance between the top of the tire and the body on the right rear corner. Maxed out. First time we've not been able to get level without using blocks. Dang door to the storage bin that houses the blocks won't open. Either something shifted around and jammed the latch, or the cable stretched or broke, or something. Need to unload the bin on the other side and crawl in there to find out what's going on. Nice thing about RV's. No matter if it's an inexpensive little trailer or a high-dollar motorhome, there's always something broken, something about to break, and a new gadget that would make life more enjoyable if you had it. A lot like owning a boat! Since I love to putter around with things, and Barb has a high tolerance level for stuff being out of whack, we get along pretty well in this lifestyle. We have friends who think everything should last forever and work perfectly all the time, and they spend some time being very frustrated with their rig. Us, we kind of shrug our shoulders and fix or have fixed whatever breaks and go on loving this lifestyle.