Thursday 19th October - day 30.
Capitol Reef to Bryce and Zion, then on to Mesquite.
Another pre-dawn departure - we creaked and bumped our way out of the dust road camp site and back onto highway 24.
We left the towering buff coloured cliffs and boulders of Capitol Reef behind us and drove up over Hells Backbone.
Today the skies were cloudy. Not the dull uniform pale grey that kills colour, these were a whole patchwork of inky blue-black, smokey grey smudges and white puffs with small blue windows and shafts of sunlight shining through from time to time. As we turned onto the (highly recommended) scenic byway 12, we climbed up onto the ridge of Hells Backbone. Here, the environment changed dramatically. We were surrounded by trees - the Dixie National Forest- green pine trees and hillsides covered by ghostly white leafless aspen trees. It was a really striking appearance - a sort of monochrome picture of grey and white vertical trunks and branches, interspersed with occasional bright larch green conifers. The distant views on either side of the ridge road were similar - grey /buff fins and canyons with dots of dark green. At this point, Route 12 was the tarmac equivalent of Striding Edge in the Lake District - steep mountain sides dropping away almost vertically on either side.
As we swept along the high road we could see orange and yellow snakes of coloured leaves on the trees growing in the river canyons below.
As we descended on the other side of the ridge, the aspen trees around us were now covered in leaves so that the palette of colours around us was now grey/white, larch green and all shades of gold, orange and yellow. We had returned to autumn in the valley after winter on the ridge.
We wound through Grover, Boulder and Escalante, stopping for coffee and breakfast at the unexpected and glorious oasis at Kiva Koffeehouse. This appeared as a simple wooden sign on the road side followed by a sharp turn that we shot past. I don’t know what made us go back but we did and it was a fantastic little wooden coffee house perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking the valley. A real oasis of loveliness staffed by four young women, serving great coffee and breakfast and selling unusually tempting pottery and jewellery. And they had Wi-fi.
After delicious latte and eggs on toast (‘medium over easy’), we set off up to the next peak - Head of the Rocks, and looked back over the vast expanse of the Escalante River Basin, between the Aquarius plateau in the north, and Navajo mountain in the south and as far as the Henry mountains on the far eastern horizon.
We drove on and into Bryce Canyon National Park. Suddenly the sun came out and we were surrounded by red rock and blue skies.
We drove down into Bryce Canyon and followed the 18 mile scenic drive to Rainbow Point. This was where we had planned to do our morning run. By now the clouds had cleared and it was warm and sunny. We ran down to the viewpoint and gazed out over canyon country, forested slopes, hoodoos and towering buttes. We ran the Bristlecone Loop Trail to Yovimpa Point. The forest path was warm with dappled sunlight. There were Douglas firs, White firs(with their upward growing needles and cones) and Bristlecone pines, some of these being up to 1600 years old.
We drove back north along the scenic drive. At Black Birch Canyon we could see some of the orange red columns or hoodoos close up. These structures started out as a fin of sedimentary rock (iron-rich limestone, sandstone, siltstone and mudstone) capped with a harder form of limestone extending from the rim of the plateau. Years of erosion have created windows in the fins, and the unsupported cap rock caves in to create hoodoos.
These are often collected into bowl-shaped patterns called amphitheatres, for example at Inspiration point.
At Agua canyon the hoodoos were particularly striking - sedimentary lines forming stripes of iron rich red rock and white limestone. A bit further along there was a huge natural arch with a view through to the distant views beyond. The rocks all glowed orange red in the afternoon sun.
We thought Bryce Canyon was fantastic - thoroughly recommended to us by several people and we agreed.
The only snag was that several car parks were closed to RVs and accessible only by shuttle buses that ran every 15 minutes, and were mostly labelled ‘full’. We decided that we had seen most of the glory of Bryce Canyon and so, especially as the sky had now clouded over, we started the next stage of our journey to Zion National Park.
Although we had maps and guides to Zion we were irritated to find that there was a $15 toll to drive an RV through the tunnel just inside the entrance to the park, and also that the main scenic drive through the park was accessible only by shuttle.
We soon forgot all this, however as we entered the park - more spectacular and incredible scenery, quite different from Bryce but just as beautiful.
The first thing we noticed was the scale - we were in the river valley looking up at vast slabs of red and grey rock. People have likened Zion to ‘being on the floor of the ‘Grand Canyon’.
Instead of narrow hoodoos and buttes, there were large rocky cones and tall cliffs and canyons. The other thing people say is that Zion is ‘like Yosemite with the colours turned up’, and we were inclined to agree - particularly with all the aspen and maple trees in their fall foliage.
We parked and hopped into the free shuttle bus. It slowly drove north through the Zion Canyon, following the Virgin River. We stopped at various intriguing founding trailheads including Angels Landing but we stayed on until the last stop at the Temple of Sinawava and walked further north along the Riverside Walk to the Narrows where the trail transforms into a back country route that involves wading on up the river through a narrow canyon for up to a further 9 miles. I waded a short way, but Bill didn’t fancy getting wet feet, so we hiked back and caught the shuttle bus back to the visitor centre, watching the cliff tops change colour as the sun set.
Tomorrow’s destination was to be Death Valley - the other side of Las Vegas, so we thought we should get some miles under our belt tonight and set off towards St George and Mesquite.
We managed to find another freebie campsite at the very rural and rustic Overton Wildlife Management Area and prepared a very overdue supper!