Bryce is Nice

Three National Parks in five days. I'm exhausted. For today's visit to Bryce Canyon, the part of Ethan will be played by Grammy. Ethan was not in the mood for another long drive and hot walk, and Grammy had been wanting to visit Bryce Canyon ever since a family drive through when she was 12-years-old. She was so impressed with Bryce that she chose to go there for her honeymoon. However, when she and my dad arrived in April of 1967, they found that Bryce was closed, and had to turn around and go home. 

We learned that Bryce is not really a canyon at all because there is no river carving out these odd standing fins and pillars (called hoodoos). Instead, the shapes are formed in the soft limestone by water freezing and defrosting over and over until the rocks split and drop off, leaving a fascinating geography. 

Jonah and Isaac earned their sixth Junior Ranger badge and this time, were joined in the oath taking by a new Junior Ranger: their dad. Robert has enjoyed working on this program with the boys and finally decided to do it himself after seeing an adult woman earn her Junior Ranger at the Grand Canyon.

At the risk of repeating myself, these pictures just don't do Bryce Canyon justice. So beautiful, so fragile, and rapidly changing. 

Here's Grammy with Jonah and Isaac. They were happy campers until they were done with their ranger program. Then they were ready to go home. But, we drove three hours to get to Bryce and weren't going to stop with out a little hiking.

And so we did a very little hiking. Everyone was getting tired and dinner at Cafe Rio back in St. George sounded oh-so-good. So we watched (or in my case, fell asleep to) an orientation video in the Visitor's Center, then got in the car and drove home.

Well, not straight home. We stopped first at the Ruby General Store and got some liquid pick-me-up in the form of diet Dr. Pepper. Robert took a couple sips and that kept him awake to drive the whole three hour trip. I drank the rest of the bottle and that kept me awake to make sure that he stayed awake.

Then we stopped to see these fun old trucks near the north entrance of Zion's National Park. It was a quick little diversion with a trip into the gift shop where we looked at, but didn't buy $5 t-shirts, polished rocks, and beautiful Roland Lee artwork.

I'm so glad we will have a few days off before we hit another National Park. Taking in all this magnificence and beauty is tiring.