Bryce and the Slot Canyons

We typically follow a ten step program for all the National Parks and Bryce Canyon was no exception.

1.  Wake up at the crack, chug coffee (we travel with a Nespresso, we're not animals)

2.  Quick stop at the visitor center for swag bag of free park info, maps, and trail guides

3.  Drive to all the tourist overlooks, always named something like Inspiration Loop, Canyon Overlook, Sunset Point or some part of the Devil's anatomy or household, i.e. backbone, fork, bathtub etc.  I especially like these stops because they involve very short hikes and I get to tick them off the trail guide list so it looks like we did lots more hiking than we actually did.  For example, we did six hikes at Capitol Reef, total mileage about 4 miles.

4.  Eat all the snacks we brought before lunch

5.  Eat lunch

6.  Drive to more scenic overlooks, complain about lack of snacks

7.  Watch Fred cook dinner in the dutch oven while I have a nice Pinot Noir, offer helpful but ignored cooking advice

8.  Watch a couple episodes of whatever we're binging on

9.   Pass out

10.  Rinse and repeat

Aforementioned tourist overlook but whoa what an overlook

Ebenezer Bryce, the Canyon's namesake was once asked to describe the majesty of this place.  His response, "It's a helluva place to lose a cow".  Well said, Eb.

There is a trail that goes down to the bottom so, of course, we took it.

It's all fun and games till you have to hike back up it

A fun thing to do here is to ask the kids what they see in the hoodoo rock formations, kinda like with clouds.

For example, the little girl next to me said she saw a pig and a horsey here, whatever.  Obviously, it's Lyndon Baines Johnson discussing geopolitical strategy with a great-horned owl.

 

Time Portal

Learning stuff from the ranger here, like the fact that Bryce Canyon is not really a canyon because canyons are carved by rivers and there isn't one here.  Bryce is a eroding, retreating plateaued margin but they probably wouldn't sell nearly as many tee-shirts with that.

If you don't do any long hikes at Bryce, you can easily do it in a day.  We drove to every overlook and took about 500 photos of the hoodoos but at the end of the day and bottom of the Cheez-it box we saw this storm approach.

Yep, sleet.  We have not had a single day of vacation without rain, snow, sleet, hail, wind gusts or all of the above

So we left and went back to the campsite for a nice glass of pinot

Slot Canyons

Playing the slots has a different meaning in Utah than in Las Vegas.  When Fred casually mentioned that he wanted to hike some slot canyons I wasn't completely on board but keep in mind that my spirit animal is a chicken.  Also, my working knowledge of slot canyons consists of a) they are cool places for eerie photographs, and b) people die in them from flash floods on a regular basis.

So we stopped at the visitor center near our campsite and got some maps to the closest ones and the guy was like yeah, it's probably ok to hike them except for Zebra canyon which is shoulder deep in water right now.  The weather forecast is generally ok so it's probably, kinda not gonna be too hard to get out there but just remember if you get stuck it's a $1,000 towing fee to get you out.  Thanks.

So we did it and it was completely one of the coolest things ever and now I'm kinda hooked. 

These slot canyons are in the middle of BFE and here is proof

There were 3 canyons, Peek-a-Boo, Spooky and Dry Fork.  I bailed on climbing into Peek-a-Boo because you had to climb up a 12 ft entrance with slippery toe holes and then wade through icy, knee-deep water.  I'm way too much of a delicate flower for that so I stayed below and flirted with some French dude who also chickened out.

Fred the gecko climbing up and the view looking through Peek-a-Boo

He got plenty of shots but even he decided not to go through the whole thing because he came to a very narrow tunnel towards the end and opted to back track out the way he came in.

Once back down on solid ground, we walked along the dry wash to the entrance to the aptly named Spooky Canyon.

At certain points, it's only ten inches wide and you have to scooch your butt down and bend your knees and slot yourself in sideways.  It's totally doable but if you got nervous during the trash compactor scene in the original Star Wars movie, this is not for you.

Totally spooky and we had the whole place to ourselves which is good because if you meet someone coming the other way it's like two cars trying to cross a single lane bridge.  Someone's gotta back up.

The last canyon we did was called the Dry Fork Narrows and it was the least slotty of the slots.  More like a wide pathway with high canyon walls, still impressive but not nearly as squishy.

I'm pooped

I'm glad we did the slot canyons and I would love to do some other ones but I'm not crazy, if there had been a drop of rain forecast for the state of Utah Fred would never have convinced me it was a good idea.  If you wanna see what a little bit of rain funneled through a slot canyon looks like just use the search terms "slot flash flood" on youtube.