Bryce Canyon National Park - Utah

We found a KOA in Cannonville, UT.  Full hookups, wifi (sometimes), sites were too small and the pool was overflowing with kids.  It worked as a base camp for our sightseeing - this sunset pic of our campsite does a good job of hiding the shortcomings:

Once we got setup we headed for Bryce Canyon NP.  The main park road is only 18 miles long with several pullouts and roads to camp, hike and catch beautiful scenery like this arch:

The park is full of canyons with hoodoos (the tall totem pole shaped rocks you see)

Closer to the park entrance we saw herds of deer including these bucks:

and herds of pronghorns including several young fawns:

including these inseparable twins:

And at almost every stop along the way you'd see one of these very friendly little guys looking for a handout:

One day we hiked the Queens Garden down and Navajo Trail back up through this canyon.  It was a long steep hike down into the land of hoodoos:

You can see how steep some of the trails are here:

Trail on the right in the shade

There were several gateways through the large hoodoos along the hike:

The trail we planned to take was closed but we hiked a 1/4 mile up to check out these arches:

The worst part was the very end where you had to climb hundreds of feet back up switchbacks:

Great hike though!  At the end of the hike, these 2 bucks were chillin by the trail head in the shade:

We too decided to chill out in the truck while we drove down the road a few miles to scope out the Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest:

It's not a huge area but the scenery is worth the drive (although you'll most likely drive by it on your way to Bryce anyway).  Some of the deepest reds we saw:

Later that afternoon we hit the Mossy Cave Trail hike on our way back to camp.  It was a short hike with nice scenery along the way:

There's a "mossy" cave at the end of one trail but nothing too exciting.  At the end of the other trail is a pretty cool waterfall:

And if you look up at the rock formations above the fall (and use your imagination), you might be able to see the Chinese dragon:

Bonus at the end of the hike was standing in the ice cold river water cooling off your feet after a long day of hiking:

Another day we drove out to the Escalate Grand Staircase National Monument (no monument actually but a huge area with all kinds of things to check out).  We drove out the Hole-In-The-Rock road and stopped at the Devil's Garden first.  From the road allyou see is desert but once you drive down into the parking area you start to see what it's all about:

We took some time to scope the area out and found some cool natural bridges:

and some short cuts:

little holes to peek through:

That's Kelly & Suze peeking through the hole

and some to climb up into:

I climbed up through the back of this one to this little opening

From here we moved another 13+ miles down the dirt road to the Dry Fork Trail head.  The "trail" was a little tricky working our way down into the valley:

Some parts were very steep over mountain sides where you had to find your own way across the slide rock:

Once you reached the bottom there didn't seem like much except for some surprisingly healthy desert vegetation growing in some very hot weather now (90s):

We soon found the 1st of 3 slots to explore (Dry Fork Slot):

As we made our way through, sections of this slot were beautiful in the right light:

Here our scout/backpack mule pauses to pose for a snapshot:

We continued on.  Some of the walls were much more yellow than red:

The next slot (Peek-a-Boo) was very challenging right from the start.  I climbed up in and went a little way but going any further looked like I'd be swimming in a pool of water:

So I turned around and started climbing back down.  This was looking back out at Kelly & Suze:

We moved on to the 3rd and final slot (Spooky Slot).  If you're claustrophobic this is not the slot for you!  We scoped it out for a little ways but decided to head back as the walls were getting very close and we were running low on water:

This was a great hike but make sure to bring plenty of water along - you're in the desert!  We thought we brought too much but turned out 2+ bottles each was just enough!  From here we headed back to the main road (Hwy 12).  Along the way we saw this huge bird hovering overhead.  Shot this through the sunroof but not sure if it's a golden eagle or condor perhaps?

GH - get Janet on this one!

We drove further down Hwy 12 to Boulder.  Incredible scenery all along the way:

There was a section of the road which ran along a mountain ridge - both sides of the road were very steep drop offs.  Little scary but more great views along the way:

Kelly's last day visiting with us we decided to go check out Kodachrome SP which was close by our campground.  The park was small but had a few interesting formations to check out.  We hiked the Shakespere Arch - Sentinel Trail.  Getting to Shakespere's Arch wasn't too bad:

but we continued on and the footing got a little trickier:

Good hike!  Pretty much the highlight of our visit at Kodachrome SP.  We then moved further down the 12 mile long dirt road to the Escalante Grosvenor Arche.  It was worth the somewhat rough ride to get there:

Look close and you can see Kelly & Suze at the base

and a close up look from under the arch:

We headed back to camp and packed up our gear to go hit the Mossy Cave trail river again - this time we were prepared with chairs & cooler!

You really need to try this on your feet after a hot day of hiking!

Later that evening we hit Ruby's just outside Bryce for an ice cream and then we drove around the park where we caught a nice sunset from Sunset Point:

We also spotted a large herd of pronghorns close by the park entrance:

and this pronghorn buck watching over them:

On our way out, we also saw a herd of deer which this guy belonged to:

Our lasst day here, we dropped Kelly off at the airport and stopped at Zion on our way back to Bryce.  We checked out the Narrows hike at our so called friend Dave's (from AK) advice.  That is until we were told 10 mins into the hike up the river we'd be in 5 feet of 40+ degree water.  Needless to say, we decided on a different hike in Zion and confirmed that we should never listen to Dave again!  It was a beautiful but very hot day in Zion:

We checked out what looked like a hike from one of the pull-offs but we ended up hiking up a river bed:

We turned around when we spotted a big old slithery reptile right in the middle of the trail.  Later at night we hit Bryce again and saw lots of deer and pronghorns.  We shot a video of a little fawn who was bouncing all around the field (didn't realize that prairie dogs were running by and probably spooking him until we watched the video later):

On our way back to camp there was a storm rolling in.  It made for interesting scenery where the sun beams were still coming through the clouds and hitting the mountains:

And after the storm passed our camp it produced some really cool rainbows just as the sun was setting:

Kelly is now back in the lovely state of Maine and we've moved on to Arches & Canyon Lands National Parks near Moab, UT where we'll be for a few days.  Zion, the Grand Canyon and Bryce National Parks were all awesome. We really had lots of fun exploring these parks with Kelly and we will miss having her with us on the rest of our trip!  More to come . . .