Hoodoos

My daughter has learned what a carbon footprint is, thank you once again Jr. Ranger programs, and has vowed to reduce hers. Bless. 

I had to remind her our carbon footprint as a family is relatively low right now, and made her recalculate according to how we live at home. The difference is there, it's not too terrible comparatively, but wow can we make some changes when we get home. This trip is definitely a lesson in how much less we actually need to survive. So much of what we use daily is such waste and purely comfort... I do miss some of that comfort though... Not gonna lie. We have learned a lot about solar and wind energy here and are certainly wishing we had invested in that small solar panel to keep us going when we are dry camping for days. 

And that's where Bryce Canyon finds us...dry camping, learning about our carbon footprint, dendrochronology, and hoodoos. Say what!? Another place of which we are in total awe. God's great drippy castle playground the girls call it. You know, like at the beach, when you drip wet sand onto your castle. Like that, but on a scale so incredible it takes your breath away. I never realized just how different the west was in general. You are driving through a landscape unlike anything you've ever seen and like nothing you ever imagined! So much of it just appears absolutely uninhabitable, barren, yet bursting with color. It is either desert or odd rock formations for miles. Driving through Utah and Arizona has been at times just eerie. Like the hoodoos for example. What is this doing here? In the middle of the United States? It is just baffling!

We hiked the hoodoos!

This is their new thing. Posing for "explorer" pictures in black and white. Please enlarge and notice their serious faces. Very authentic!

We did some major hikes here and each earned an "I hiked the hoodoos" award. You have to take selfies at benchmarks along the trails to prove you hiked over three miles and that we did! We all were hoping the prize would be a water bottle for some reason and we joked it was going to be a sticker... it was a sticker. We all died laughing. The poor ranger. I had to apologize. It was a very nice sticker.

We giggled and whispered our way to the car the next morning in the dark to catch the sunrise over the hoodoos. However, it was SO incredibly cold we had to watch it finish its ascent from the car. It was incredible. I have never seen the sun cast genuine, distinct rays from the horizon such as this. We got home to an equally as cold RV and jumped in our bed to snuggle and run the space heater. Later, we explored the visitor center, hiked the trails, and earned our Jr. Ranger badges. Our campsite finally has a place to set up the Eno and that provided a lot of evening entertainment. 

Working on our badges in a prairie dog burrow display!

Earning our Jr. Ranger badges!

Lovin' the eno!

We set out early the next morning for Zion National Park. 

Zion... We planned for one day and stayed four. We love this place. The only drawback to Zion is that camping is first come first serve. We got there as soon as we could, but it took us until 2 PM to score the last spot in the park. At that point we realized we'd have to stay longer than a day to see the park. This would mean canceling our plans to go to Great Basin National Park. It was a hard decision… You never know if a certain place could end up being a favorite memory. And let's face it, when are we ever going to go to Great Basin National Park again! So many of our stops have gone way beyond our expectations, and Zion certainly became a favorite. Here we found another happy place and went there every afternoon for hours on end. Even Chance got a wild hair and turned into the retriever we always knew he could be! 

Our first full day in Zion, we decided we would hike into The Narrows a bit. We happened to fall in line behind a guided tour and rode their coattails the whole way. This hike will go down as our favorite hike ever. For most of the hike you literally walk in the water. What an adventure! All around you the walls tower, the sunlight pouring in through slot canyons; there's just no way to explain the beauty of where we were hiking. Around each turn it became more beautiful making it hard to turn back. Eventually we did, the return being just as adventurous!

 

Done!

Day two we hiked some more, earned our Junior Ranger badges, and returned to our happy place yet again. We were so sad to leave this beautiful place!

 

Practicing her spelling words!

Tomorrow we head toward California in the hopes that Yosemite has a laundromat. We are seriously wearing some odd combinations these days. Yes, this is how I now allow my children to roll into Walmart... pajamas, inside out, and one shoe kinda on kinda off. M always says, "Well, at least we'll never seem 'em again!" Amen, sister. And with that we roll on!