The Grand Circle - Part 1

I have been meaning to post about our trip. I start writing a post and then figure getting the movie clip of our trip highlights put together is the better way to go. Then I think no, I ought to post. Doing two things at once, and not finishing either one. The movie clip is close to done but probably won't be finished until the weekend, since we are back in the thick of a very busy time of year at work, school, and the kids' activities all competing for every waking moment...

This year, we decided to do The Grand Circle, which is just a fancy name for a high concentration of national and state parks in Utah and Arizona. I have always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon and see the US southwest. Though having done the trip now, I would classify this trip more as 'west' than 'southwest'. I think that southern Arizona and New Mexico would look and feel quite different (we did not see any adobe-type architecture, for example; that's further south). And I'd still love to do that someday.

We flew into Las Vegas, and spent one night there on either side of our trip. Both Chad and I had been there before so it did not warrant much attention. The kids did enjoy driving down the strip when we arrived. We were not settled into our hotel room until 11 p.m. or so local time (2 a.m. EDT) and that was AFTER Chad and I competed in the Bulldog duathlon/triathlon that same morning... needless to say, we were wiped out, and promptly went to bed. So much for the Cooks making the most out of their time in Sin City!

 We spent the following morning at the pool before heading out around noon for our first stop: Zion National Park. This was the prettiest place we visited. At Zion, you are at the bottom of a canyon, surrounded by red sandstone cliffs that converge together as you approach the end of the canyon. The Virgin River runs through the canyon so there is lots of greenery around. It's a little oasis in the middle of the desert. It's hard to capture in pictures how you are in this rocky red bowl.

The main activity at Zion was hiking The Narrows. As you approach the end of Zion Canyon, the cliff walls come closer and closer together until the valley is too narrow and the road ends. Then the cliffs narrow further still, until they are at times only a few meters apart but 500m high. At that point the river is the only thing between the canyon walls. The Narrows is a hike where the riverbed IS the hiking trail. In the spring it can be chin-deep but at this time of year, it's pretty shallow. The whole thing is 16 miles long. We just went upstream for a couple of hours, until we felt like turning around. There was a flash flood the day before we got there, and it was closed the day after we did our hike for another flood warning. Thank goodness our timing worked out!

After a few days in Zion, we drove up to Bryce Canyon. This was really just a convenient pit stop for us; we only spent one night there. It's a good thing, too. There was a lot of rain the day we did this and temperatures were in the low 50s. Bryce is over 8000 feet in elevation, and Liam did not feel well. We stayed in a cool stone cabin inside the park, went to a rodeo and Old Bryce Town, and did some short hikes the next morning before heading out.

The third stop (and lengthiest of our trip) was Moab, which is an outdoor adventure lover's haven. So much to do there! En route we stopped in Fruita, an old Mormon settlement of fruit orchards. There's a historic homestead there that makes awesome pies, so we had to pick a few up. You're also invited to pick whatever fruit might be ripe. Liam was quite excited by this so we turned into the first peach orchard we found. Purely by coincidence it was called:

Moab had the best assortment of activities on our trip. Just outside of town is Arches National Park which is full of - you guessed it - natural stone arches. Here, we booked a trip through The Fiery Furnace, which is a ranger-led hike that involves lots of scrambling, bouldering, and chimneying through the rocks. The kids really got a kick out of it and they easily squeezed through the cracks in the rock that took the adults a lot more time to negotiate!

 Here's Mallory being helped by our ranger over a particularly precipitous drop:

 And along one of the ledges:

We stayed outside of Moab, at a place called Red Cliffs Lodge. It was stunning. Right on the bank of the Colorado River.

And that was part 1. The movie we're putting together has a lot more detail on each of our stops, but even so, it's hard narrowing it down to a manageable size or to really capture the beauty of some of the places we saw. I'll post it when it's done, and hopefully have Part 2 of our trip report soon.