Amazing Utah

Utah is absolutely amazing!  I used my GoPro Hero2 and made a few small time-lapse movies in some of the parks we visited.  This is a quick stitch of the movies.

In this video you see Grand Canyon (1st shot is from Grand Viewpoint, 2nd is from Angles Landing trail head), Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, The Wave (this is in Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument; we were lucky to win the lottery for a walk in permit the day before our planned hike) and finally Monument Valley National Park (technically this is the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park and is in Arizona but the features are in Utah).

 

Hoodoos to Faces

Our next stop after the Moab area was Bryce Canyon.  Bryce is known for Hodoos, the tower like rock formation you see in the photos.  It’s pretty high elevation (close to 9000 feet at some of the rims), so G and I bundled up for a hike and tour around the park.  The hike went down into the amphitheater area of Bryce past the Hoodoos and into a Ponderosa forest which smelled wonderful.

Our next stop was Zion.  Driving into Zion is like driving into a stone fortress.  You’re surrounded by incredibly tall rock faces.  We did some hiking and bedded down for the night at the only open campground in the park.  The next morning we set off to grab  some breakfast before heading out of the park.  Almost immediately, we heard a terrible grinding noise coming from the back wheel.  We assumed the noise was coming from the brake after a little investigating.  This meant a day delay and a small detour to the closest town.  The good news is that it gave us time to refurbish our coffee maker.  The next morning we headed to a local mechanic only to discover that our brake problem was actually the mud flap grinding up against the wheel.  George had backed into a rock leaving the campground the day before and bent the flap.  Lucky for us, the mechanic didn’t charge us and topped off our tires to boot.