Sunday, May 5-Tuesday, May 7

We get an early start Sunday and see this along the way.

We arrive in Moab in time to hang out in town and do some shopping (and laundry-laundromats usually have wi-fi and give us a chance to catch up on correspondence and blogging). Moab is a wide-open kind of town that caters to hikers, campers, off roaders, and all kinds of local characters. It’s crowded, but I like the energy. Gear Heads is a huge outdoor store and we spend some time in there and come out with a new tent. It’s made by Nemo, a company that makes all kinds of camping equipment and offers a life-time guarantee. We’ll post a picture at the next camp site.

I booked a kind of tiny house/room at a place right in town called Kokopelli West.

I booked this through Hotels.com because it’s so convenient, but they neglected to send me an email with our door code, so we had no way to get in. This is yet another place with no one on duty; totally self-service. Fortunately, the housekeeping staff helped us by calling the owner and getting the code. I need to stop using these 3rd party services and book directly through the hotels, but anyway…we got in. It was really great to take a shower after 3 days of camping in red dust!

We walked to a Thai restaurant and had a really excellent meal.

Monday, May 6

We’re not quite sure where to go next. Arches is nearby, but their campsites are all reservation only and are booked up months in advance. These days you even need an advance ticket to enter the park-that seems like a hassle and when we pass the entrance there is a long line of cars backed up-we keep on going. We do stop by Capitol Reef National Park long enough to take a walk out to an overlook and get some pictures.

We’re headed to Bryce Canyon National Park and take the scenic route through Escalante. We travel over some very high mountains-with steep drop-offs…we have a knack for finding those curvy roads!

I’m checking the weather for Bryce Canyon and it’s not looking that favorable…a low of 28 and high winds. We’re pretty hardy campers but the wind thing is daunting, so we check into the Bryce Canyon motel in Panguitch, Utah for the right price of $56 a night.

It’s a very small town that caters to the Park traffic and has a lot of motels that have been in operation for a long time. There’s an actual person at the desk-her name is Kristen and she has come from her home in Arizona to help out a friend who owns the motel. She’s very friendly and gives us restaurant advice. All of Main St smells like smoked meat as the 2 or 3 restaurants there are barbeque places.

Tuesday, May 7-Bryce Canyon NP

We’re coming to accept the reality that visiting the National Parks is not the same as it used to be. This morning the visitor center at Bryce is like the mall at Christmas. We wait in line for some time to talk to a ranger at the information desk about dispersed camping at Zion, where we hope to go next. They only have reserved campsites now so we know we won’t get into their campgrounds, but we hope that the rangers can give us some advice about where to camp outside the park. The rather bored looking person behind the desk says he doesn’t know anything about that-end of discussion.

We’re kind of annoyed and disappointed, but it’s a beautiful day, we’re in the park, and we’re going to take a hike. The Two Bridges/Queen’s Garden combination loop does not disappoint. It starts at Sunrise Point and ends at Sunset Point about 3 miles down into the canyon and back up. It’s pretty easy until the 500ft elevation gain at the end-totally worth it for the views and the beautiful day.

Tonight while we were waiting for a table (and some brisket) at the restaurant, we talked to someone who had just come from Zion. She said it was shockingly crowded. As much as we love Zion and really wanted to go there, we may just skip it. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!