Red Rock Utah, Part 2: Bryce and Zion, April 2021

April 11, continued:  We took Highway 12 from Torrey to Bryce, a spectacular ride.  Many years ago, we had driven the southern part of this road, in the Escalante area, but we had never seen the northern portion.  The road climbed to more than 9000 feet and overlooked a huge expanse of red rock country, from Capitol Reef to the Henry Mountains to Navajo Mountain to Boulder.  We stopped at several of the scenic overlooks.

The infamous "hogback" portion of the road, which is twisty and narrow with sheer cliffs dropping down from either side of the highway, was a piece of cake.  Great views, but not scary at all.  However, in snow, ice, fog, or rain, this would be a cake best left uneaten.

We had hoped to find boondocking near Bryce, but suspected (correctly) that the wet forest roads would still be closed due to melting ice and snow.  We found an opening at a small RV park not far from Bryce, where we had stayed in 2006.

We took a quick ride into Bryce to watch the sunset, but it was too cloudy.  But when we got back to the trailer, the view from the RV park was better:

April 12:  We hiked the Queen's Garden trail at Bryce -- lots of folks, just as at Capitol Reef.  There was still some snow in the deeper crevices of the hoodoos along the rim:

Close up, the surfaces of many of the hoodoos looked like a child's "drip castle:"

After the hike, we took a ride on the bike trail, which climbs south along the rim.  The surface was great, and it was fun to glide back down the hill without having to worry about the traffic.

April 13:  We left Bryce and headed toward Zion.  (Ordinarily, we would spend more than a day at a given location, but we have been to Bryce several times.). Instead of taking Highway 89 south to Highway 9 and then through the infamously-slow tunnel, we went north on 89 and took 20 over the top to I-15, an easy and scenic drive.

We found a one-night opening at an RV park in Hurricane, parked the trailer, and then went up to Kolob Terrace and the Cave Valley to look for boondocking.  I had marked several promising sites near Lambs Knoll on BLM land, just outside the Zion boundary.

The area was very beautiful -- but when we parked the truck and walked up the access roads to evaluate the campsites, we discovered that the "roads" consisted of deep, powdery sand, with hugely uneven two-track surfaces.  These campsites might have been reachable with a big truck with balloon tires pulling a tiny teardrop trailer with a low center of gravity.  But they were clearly not for us -- too much risk of getting stuck.  This was a real disappointment, since the Cave Valley was so enticing.  (Discretion is the better part of boondocking.)

The next morning, we looked for boondocking in the Sheep Bridge area, a huge and popular expanse of BLM land between Highway 9 and Highway 59.  Usually, I would not identify a boondocking area with such specificity; that is considered to be a breach of etiquette.  But this area is no secret.  

We got lucky and found a nice level site a few miles southwest of Virgin, Utah.  The access roads were very bumpy and rutted, requiring high ground clearance.  As a result, our neighbors were about a quarter mile away.  (Other parts of Sheep Bridge were more densely occupied.)

After setting up the campsite, we drove into Springdale, intending to take a bike ride along the Virgin River trail into Zion itself.  Springdale was jammed with people -- we had never seen it so busy.  In the old days, there was plenty of free parking.  Now, though, the town and the park service have begun charging for parking, and it is not cheap.

But all was forgiven as soon as we got onto that amazing bike trail -- to give some idea of the scale, Felice is in red at the bottom center of this shot:

Although the photos of the bike trail are enticing, they don't show the swarms of electric bikes on the trail, a new phenomenon.  Tourist rent the bikes in town and then zoom around the hikers and bikers using the trail.  The e-bikes are fast -- up to 30 mph -- and most of the tourists are unfamiliar with the controls.  We saw several near-accidents.

But never mind.  It was a cool and breezy afternoon, a perfect time to see if I could still lift my heavy mountain bike overhead despite my advanced years:

Since the shuttles were running, there was no car traffic on the canyon road, and we could glide down slowly while admiring the scenery:

 

We sat for a short while next to the river.  Although the river looks pretty, there were signs everywhere warning that the river contained cyanobacteria and was unsafe to touch.  A ranger told us that the failure of the monsoon in the summer of 2020 meant that the bacteria had not been flushed out:

Back at the trailer, we found that the front window formed a perfect frame around Gooseberry Mesa to our south -- this photo was taken from the kitchen table:

This campsite was not great for landscape astrophotography -- there were small domes of light pollution in every direction, created by the cluster of small towns near Zion.  This is Smith Mesa, north of our campsite:

April 15:  It was a great morning for photography -- cool, windy, partly cloudy.  We had thought that by camping at Sheep Bridge instead of a more remote location, we would lose out on the scenic beauty of the Zion area and would be stuck in a featureless desert.  Instead, this wide-open location put us right in the middle of the Virgin River valley, with colorful mesas and mountains all around us -- a pleasant surprise.

There was a range of high mountains to the northwest, with some snow still in the higher gullies -- I think this is the Signal Peak/Pine Valley area.  Signal Peak is over 10,000 feet high:

The distinctive skyline of Zion Canyon was to our east:

And this is what Smith Mesa (to our north) looks like in the daytime:

We headed into Zion, to ride the entire length of the canyon (maybe 8 miles each way).  The road runs along the river:

The rock formations toward the top of the cliff are called "blind arches:"

At the north end of the canyon, we parked the bikes and walked along the riverbank toward the Narrows.  The trees had just "leafed out," and the backlit neon green foliage was brilliant against the dark canyon walls:

After pedaling up to the head of the canyon (which is not really arduous at all), the big payoff is the slow glide back down:

By the time we got back to the trailer, the clouds had begun to gather:

Although the clouds were pretty, we were hoping that the predicted 20% chance of light showers would not turn into a real rainstorm -- the soil in the Sheep Bridge area is a type of clay that forms a thick, slippery gumbo when it gets wet.  There were deep ruts of dried mud next to our campsite, to remind us of the danger:

The wind picked up, and streaks of virga appeared over Gooseberry Mesa:

And there was also virga over both Smith Mesa and Zion Canyon:

The storm blew over -- no rain for us -- and Gooseberry Mesa lit up in the evening sunshine: 

This was a 20 second shot of the stars over Smith Mesa, ISO 3200 -- I like the way that the fast-moving clouds were slightly blurred by the time exposure:

April 16:  This was our last day at Zion -- we rode our bikes up the canyon to the Emerald Pools hike.  As a result of the severe drought, the pools were very small, and they were more brown than emerald.

But it was still a nice hike -- there were some wildflowers along the way:

And there was some water in the falls:

This shot is emblematic of April in Zion -- new green leaves against the red rock walls:

No photo essay about Zion is complete without a shot of the Watchman:

As sunset approached, the cliffs of Zion started to glow:

Fittingly, the last sunset of the trip was the best of the bunch:

April 17:   As we left the campsite for home, we took a short video of the trailer going over the ruts and the potholes:

Our long trip home was aided by a lucky (and rare) northeasterly tailwind.