Our Grand Vacation

Our trip was great. We hiked to the bottom of Bryce and back up the first day. The kids whined...alot. The hoodoos we saw were so cool, but the change in elevation made the 3 miles feel like ten. That night we stayed in Cannonville, a tiny town. We had to call the manager to come and let us into our room. He arrived on an ATV in about a half-hour. You've got to love Utah. The next day we went on a wonderful 6-mile roundtrip hike to Calf Creek Falls. It had a cool clear gurgling stream all along the way. We even saw a petraglyph. We were rewarded at the end of the hike with a 128-ft. waterfall! We were having someone take our picture in front of the falls and a big black raven had the nerve to steal Lyndsey's unwrapped granola bar and take off with it. We all laughed, but Lyndsey was sad. I made her feel better by telling her about my lost yogurt parfait in a stream when I hopped over it, and it was unsecured in my fanny pack, on a previous hike.

We drove through the beautiful Escalante Staircase Monument. The landscape would change from red cliffs to light colored slickrock swells. The next few minutes were driving through a forest of pine trees. After stopping at the Petrified Forest and Anasazi State Park we drove to Kanab that night. Kanab is the cutest little town with red cliffs. It is famous for the western movies made there. We stayed in historic Parry's Lodge. It is a beautiful colonial home with "boarding house" style rooms where all the stars stayed in the fifties when they made all those movies. It was so fun. The have an old barn where they show a free western movie every night. The movies where made in Kanab and the stars all stayed at the lodge. We stayed there two nights (in Sammy Davis Jr. Room) and didn't even use the ITEX voucher for the second night I had prepaid for ahead of time. We couldn't face back- tracking all that way just to stay there on the way home. The kids wanted more time to swim in the nice pool that John Wayne had built there at the lodge.

We drove to the Grand Canyon the following day. We took a wrong turn (how dare they not mark the right way with a BIG sign?) We almost went to Flagstaff. Everyone (even ME) was exhausted from the heat and all the hiking. We took a little hike (5 miles of mostly flat ground) around the rim of the canyon. It is really an amazing, huge hole in the ground. It is hard to fathom. I really want to backpack overnight someday there and go rim to rim. I don't think I will have any takers in my family though. After the hike we went to the lodge which is perched on the cliff of the canyon and sat in the rustic chairs and took it all in. Everyone was sick of hiking, so I went on a paved half mile hike to Angel's landing which went off on a little ledge overlooking into the canyon. The height really takes your breath away and makes you feel dizzy.

Yesterday morning we were ready to leave. I woke early to go running and ended up running up a trail to Squaw Peak. It was 1 1/2 miles to the top of a cliff overlooking Kanab and the whole surrounding area of beautiful landscape. You could see for miles. I was really trying not the run off the cliff when the sun came peaking up over the top of the ridge. There was a bench up on the top of the mountain. I stood on top of it and yelled "wheewwww." Know one could hear me, but it was fun to do.

I really enjoyed this trip, even if I dragged the rest of the family along. Sometimes you have to do what you want to do, when you don't get to do it very often. Mark called it my "dream vacation" It was in a way, but in my dreams I would have hiked longer, faster, and more often...hee, hee.