Month: September 2021

11-12 August:  Our next camping destination was Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah.  A while after leaving the bleak landscape between Green River and Goblin Valley behind us, the scenery began to get interesting.  We passed occasional rocky buttes first, then threaded our way between the colorful and tall sandstone cliffs of Capitol Reef National Park.

Next, we ascended onto a high pine-covered plateau before the highway emerged along the narrow crest of a high rocky ridge between two vast and deep valleys.  This was the justly famed “Hogback” stretch of Highway 12 along the “Devil’s Backbone,” a truly awesome vista said to be one of the most scenic drives in the country, between Boulder and Escalante, Utah.  About 40 miles of Hwy 12 follows the route taken by Maj. John Wesley Powell in 1872 during his mapping expedition to fill in the “last blank spot on the map” of the continental U.S.

It had been 37 years since we had first visited Bryce, and it was nice to get back.  The air seemed relatively cool and clear, due to the high elevation and the lack of thick haze from Pacific Northwest wildfires that had obscured the mountains from our view while in the Denver area.  We hiked down from the rim of the plateau into the Bryce Amphitheater section of the park where the ornately eroded hoodoos are impressively clustered together along the face of the pink cliff formation, and then we continued around a loop trail that ascended through a tall slot canyon back to the rim of the plateau.

13-14 August:  After Bryce, we spent a couple of days exploring some of the scenery that Dixie National Forest has to offer.  In Red Canyon, the NF visitor center is not only located in a very scenic spot, but the outdoor kiosks and indoor exhibits are first rate.  When we noticed that the bike trail through the canyon is paved, we decided on a shorter hike for the day, so we would have enough time also for a bike ride in this scenic canyon among red rock formations and ponderosa pine trees.  After biking, we hiked the Pink Ledges interpretive trail, which loops up past a pair of prominent hoodoos overlooking the visitor center.

We stayed that night in the Duck Creek NF campground, in a quiet setting of spruce trees, aspens, and grassy meadows.  Our drive the next morning climbed over a forested ridge, passing through an area of jagged black lava flows, then descended through a winding canyon to Cedar City.  It was a challenge finding the trail we had chosen for this day’s hike, the Noah’s Ark Trail, because of recent flash flood damage in the creek valley and ongoing reconstruction work behind a locked gate.  With another couple we met nearby, who joined us for the hike, we were able to bushwhack through the damaged area and find the trail.  It was worth the effort.  The trail climbed up the end of a ridge to a fine overlook toward Vermillion Castle, a rugged red sandstone mountain on the opposite side of the Bowery Creek valley.  Along the trail we noticed some bristlecone pine trees as well as a thick layer of conglomerate containing large rounded stones.  A gravestone near the trailhead informed us that Adalinda, who had settled there with her husband William Uriah Thornton in 1887 to build the first home and shingle mill on the creek, was the $5 winner of a contest when she named the area Vermillion Castle.