Red Canyon Utah, 11/22

November 23, 2024

Wow! This felt like a hidden gem of a park!. The campground was closed, but that would be an ideal place to explore. The park is just outside of Bryce canyon, but is much smaller, bit in our half day hiking there, we saw 2 people with 2 dogs.

Our trail was a combination of the Golden wall trail and the Buckhorn trail, and hair raising overlook. Just under five miles, but a lot of up and down through the red rock hoodoos, and forest. Just magical! The best part is that dogs are allowed, which we find fantastic.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah 11/20

November 22, 2024

Ginger is taking a break, as we are in the National Park, and her movements are restricted, I don't think she minds much. There are more people here to dote over her in the campground and places she can go to.

Tomorrow though, we'll hike the Red Canyon, just outside the park. She will love that.

Bryce Canyon is amazing, but they made some technical mistakes that are persistent. There is no canyon, rather an amphitheater of incredible, superfabulous hoodoos. There is a Natural Bridge overlook that is technically an arch. So, let's petition for a name change and some updates…. Nah. The marketing department wouldn't be interested in that.

Cool temperatures- like a low of 23, and a high of 42, allow us to neglect Ginger with abandon, and go hike the fabulous trails.

We will explore Red Canyon today, 11/22, which is just outside the NP, so Ginger will be able to join us for a walk- no more resting for her!

Also there are some trails there that are MTB friendly, so maybe I'll get in a bike ride as well?

Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada 11/17

November 21, 2024

When I made reservations at the Valley of Fire State Park, I got so annoyed that I trimmed our stay from 3 days to 2. Welp, that was likely a bad choice, but we had a great time exploring this park while we were here.

The annoyance was largely that it felt that they kept adding on fees and charges for things that weren't optional. I first read that the camp sites are $10- great!, but there's the day use fees- per person, there's the out of state person surcharge, there's the taxes applied to the bill, So the $30 for 3 days turned out to be $85.

But we lucked into the most amazing, fantastic campsite! It was in its own little red rock amphitheater, with amazing formations, sunshine, shade structure with picnic table, water and trash cans. The neighbor said that we'd hear/see bighorn sheep in the evening and maybe a desert fox - right! What?!?! For real! The big horn are smart enough to turn on the water spigot, but not turn it off.

There's no describing the excitement of exploring the nooks and crannies of the sandstone erosion, only to find petroglyphs carved nearby.