After we said good bye to Marc and Rachel, we continued our way along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and crossed the Glen Canyon Dam (the highest dam of America), in order to drive to our next destination, Bryce Canyon National Park where we planned to stay half a day. First we drove the Scenic Route and stopped along the way in order to see the “Canyon” from above (Sunset and Sunrise Point, Inspiration Point, Bryce Point, Paria View). However, Canyon is actually not the correct name, as it’s actually a huge amphitheatre instead of a canyon. A guy named Bryce started discovering the area one day, and the local people just called the area Bryce’s Canyon. The first view is weird but amazing. Orange-red rocks in lots of different formations, but especially the small rock piles are very extraordinary. Once again, this phenomena developed through glaciers, water and erosion. Going from view point to view point, you won’t recognize a lot of changes in the view, why we decided we had to go down and watch the rocks from the bottom. That makes the experience much more remarkable. The highlights are Thors Hammer, two bridges and Wall Street (see pics) and definitely worth the two hour hike.
However, there is not that much more to do in Bryce Canyon and we continued the drive to our hostess Lark in Cedar City in the evening, who accepted us on a very short notice. She is 26 years old, has a master in Spanish and English as a foreign language. She moved to Nebraska two weeks after we visited her, in order to reunion with her fairly new husband and start a new life there, teaching at the local university. Lark taught us a lot about politics (finally, we were always afraid to talk about that, as it’s a bit of a taboo topic here, and yes she is democratic 🙂 ), Mormons, Amish and the development of the American language. Apparently, Utah is THE mormon state. A few of you folks probably think now: what was a Mormon? The answer: Mormons are Christians and they determined their sense of life in getting married as young as possible and producing as many children as possible. Yes exactly, you heard correctly. Lark explained us more, it goes so far that a usual car is not enough, instead a bus is needed. No, not a small van! A huge, yellow, American school bus, in which all of the 18 children are squeezed to fit in. If we learned something on this travel, then each to his own! 🙂
Lark gave us a few good tips for our destination for the next two days: Zion National Park. All people we met told us Zion is much nicer than Bryce why we planned only one day in Bryce and two in Zion. As the weather forecast was good (no rain), Lark recommended us to hike the Narrow Walk, which leads along a river to a narrow canyon. A word, a blow! When we arrived the next morning at the entry of the national park, we were a bit worried as apparently there were no free parking spots left in the park. The nice lady at the fee station stated again that there were no parking spots left. We just thought, let’s try! And there you are, we drive on the parking ground and a second later someone leaves. Sometimes we are in a flow! As cars are forbidden in the park, we took the shuttle bus and made our way to the Narrow Trailhead, a hike which was paved within the first 30 minutes, but then leads through the river. Afterwards we walked (or better to say waded) for 4-5km, across and through the river until the canyon narrowed to only 1-2m. Really impressive and of course no usual experience. Back at Lark’s place, she waited for us with self-made and delicious Mexican Enchiladas!
The next day we planned to do the Hike to Angel’s Landing. This time with a bit of a longer parking spot search, but still no problem. The way to Angel’s Landing consists of three parts. In the beginning we walked in the hot sun (around 40°C) along a couple of switchbacks and approximately 150m in altitude into a small canyon. That’s where it became shady, otherwise we would have had a problem with our water reserves. Within the canyon, we walked up another 150m just to arrive on a plateau and see the actual highlight of the hike. A narrow trail leads to an elevation of around 500m above the canyon. The elevation is just a narrow tongue into the canyon with steep cliffs on either sides. The way is primitive, just a few chains to hold on transmit a good feeling if you are balancing on a stone 50cm apart from the deep. Ok, that does sound a bit more dramatic than it actually was, but anyone who is afraid of heights should definitely avoid this trail. Apparently, 6 people died on this trail, which is due to our description probably not surprising, but it was rather carelessness than real danger. Anyway, finally arrived at the top, there is a beautiful 360° view into 3 further canyons. After a short lunch break and defence of our food against thieving squirrels and chipmunks, we made our way back. The awesome view and the exciting trail was definitely worth the effort!
Back in the canyon, we walked to Emerald Pools, which didn’t blew us away too much, and back at Lark’s, we finally could prepare dinner for her (German pasta salad). Again an awesome couchsurfing experience in Amerika, it’s still getting better here. The next morning, we said goodbye to Lark and drove to the city of sin – but with a small delay, as we somehow managed to lock us out of our room with all our stuff being inside the room and then after an hour managed to break in with a supermarket club card,…