Bryce Canyon & Springdale

Trip Start Apr 04, 2008
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Trip End Apr 20, 2008


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Flag of United States  , Utah,
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Up early today (6am) for the long drive to Utah, in the third car we've had this vacation - a huge Escalade 4 x 4 ....... In case there's snow. It's extremely windy driving up the Interstate, through Nevada and Arizona to Utah.
 
During the journey, it becomes clear why Nevada decided it needed to be the gambling state, because there's not much else going for it. The landscape is stark and scrubby, not stark and stunning as in Arizona and Utah.
 
We stopped for brunch at Sullivan's Café in Cedar City, which I'd found on the internet, and then drove another hundred miles on smaller roads up mountains and through towering cliffs to Bryce Canyon.
 
Bryce is a National Park at 8,000 feet, where you are at the top of an escarpment looking down into a natural amphitheatre and across three states: Utah, Arizona and on a good day, New Mexico Rainbow Point, Bryce Canyon - 9115 ft
Rainbow Point, Bryce Canyon - 9115 ft
 . The rock has been weathered into weird pointy columns called hoodoos.
 
It was very windy again, so not clear enough to see New Mexico, or the north rim of the Grand Canyon, but still spectacularly stunning. There was a tiny patch of snow on the road, so Andy drove through it several times, to the bemusement of a woman standing next to a campervan.......
 
One small concern - apparently the rodents and prairie-dogs here carry the bubonic plague - who knew?
 
After visiting all the viewing points here, we drove on down another hundred miles or so to Springdale, a small community located at the entrance to Zion National Park, where the spent the night in the fabulous Desert Pearl Inn, with its amazing fusion of Southwest and Scandinavian décor.
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