Bryce Canyon

The trip to Bryce Canyon was vY uneventful. The fact that cruising through beautiful canyons and high desert is "uneventful" just proves how amazing this trip has been.

Lunch was in a backwater call Green...green...something. The restaurant was clean and locals didn't leer at me, so that's about as much as I can ask for.

My campground was a bit outside the main park, so I first set up my tent, then went on a nice three-ish mile walk down to the Sevier River, then back to the campground restaurant for local beer, river trout, and homemade cream cheese and raisin pie (apparently a local thing).

I woke up early enough to ride up to Bryce and be at the trailhead by 9:30. I went to Bryce Point first, the highest point in the main Bryce ampitheatre. I walked down through the canyon, mostly alone, then back up to Sunrise Point, the lowest point of the rim. I had an excellent lunch of elk chili, bison burger, and a rather good local dark IPA. It was an easy, sloping uphill hike back to Bryce Point along the rim, at which point I went back to the campground, it being almost 5 by now.

I took a shower and did laundry, then rode back up at sunset, all the way to the southermost tip of Bryce. A trip outside the park for a dinner of coffee and enchiladas. By the time I got out, it was dark; as the Stranger says, darker than a black steers tuchus on a moonless prarie night.

Thw temperature dropped almost immediately into the 50s! After an aborted trip back to go stargazing, I retreates to the campsite to put the windproof lining in my jacket, plus a sweater and my jeans under ny riding pants. I then made the 25 mile trip up to the 9,000 ft peak at Bryce, through tight switchbacks, fearing a deer was going to jump infront of my bike.

Sadly, the moon was still out, and at 3/4, way too bright for decent star gazing! I couldn't even look at it, it was so bright.

So I decended the canyon, and promptly passed out at midnight, warm in ny sleeping back, fairly comfortable on a bed of pine needles, with my bike cover as my pillow!