Canyon Country

Greetings from our office (which happens to double as a Laundromat) in St. George, Utah. After many miles and lots of grime, it was time for a shower, clean clothes, and some electricity to feed our voracious devices. One of this week’s findings is that Ben’s tolerance for not showering is greater than Carolyn’s tolerance for Ben not showering. Fancy that.

After a great bluegrass show from Oakhurst in Denver with Noonan, Gina, Brian “T-Baggins” Taylor, and his girlfriend Bizz, we again set our sights west and headed towards Gunnison, CO. Our grandiose driving plans were quickly cut short when we fell head over heels for a National Forest campsite tucked in the mountains under towering pines near Independence Pass. It called to us and our driving ambitions were dashed for the day, so we took a nice hike to the Continental Divide and were serenaded to sleep by a roaring stream next to our site. We love that this trip allows us to call audibles at will, so we can come and go from each place as we please. It is a rarity in the typically compressed American vacation.


















The next day, we made it to Gunnison and camped near the river at the bottom of the Black Canyon in the national park of the same name. The canyon was spectacular, but we were nagged by cloudy skies and intermittent rain. The following morning, the sun asserted itself and we got to see the canyon in its glory. Sadly, like much of what we’ll see, the photos don’t do it justice. We prefer to blame that on the camera, rather than user incompetence. If you're looking for a challenge, try to find Ben in the picture below on the left. After leaving the park, we headed to Telluride and Ouray, CO, the latter of which rewarded us with a soak in some hot springs (good call, Elizabeth!). This area was stunning, with jagged snow-covered peaks in all directions.























From here, we entered the vast expanses of arid rock that make up Southern Utah. The seemingly infinite expanses of parched rock which have been sculpted through the eons by unseen water are quite a juxtaposition to behold. Half of the passengers in our car were delighted by this barren scenery and the other half pined for pines (and other flora), but all parties shall remain nameless in this matter. We did a few short hikes at Natural Bridges National Monument and Capital Reef National Park on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park.



















At Bryce we explored the fanciful hoodoos eroded from the soft sandstone. We also met some fine German lads and got to dazzle them with our cobweb-coated high school Deutsch vocabularies. The number of Europeans we’ve met in the parks is incredible - in places, they outnumber the Americans. Regardless of nationality, we are thrilled by the endless stream of friendly and interesting people we’ve met. We are not sure if it’s self selection by park lovers (i.e. all campers are cool), the luck of catching people on vacation (i.e. people are cool when they’re on vacation), the change in our viewpoint since we’re on vacation ourselves (i.e. people are always cool, but we’ve been too busy to notice), or something else entirely…..but we like it.



















Tune in to our next post for the high and lowlights of our backpacking expedition into the Buckskin Gulch slot canyon!

P.S. Sharp-eyed blog consumers will notice that our McDonald’s count is slowly creeping upward. We’re actually way behind forecast and we attribute this to the fact that we’ve rarely travelled on interstate highways thus far. The purpose of the count is to appall our readers with the number of fast food joints littering our highways and to give us something else to look for on long, lonely drives. One of our goals this summer is to avoid eating at any chain restaurants. So far this hasn’t been hard and we’ve been rewarded with some pretty eclectic pit stops. Just doing our part to keep it real…