Hoodoo You Think You Are?

After the Tetons, we stayed near Salt Lake City and drove through the desert to Great Basin National Park in Nevada.  This is a smaller one and didn't seem to be too busy.  The tickets to see the cave were sold out, so we found a hike to do instead.  We drove most of the way up a mountain and ate lunch before we started though, first things first.  At the end of the trail we were hiking is a bristlecone pine grove that is home to some of the oldest trees in the world.  In 1964, there was a tree cut down there that was over 4900 years old!  We hiked most of the way up to the grove when we heard thunder and decided it was safest to go back.  Before we even made it out of the park, it was pouring.

Before long, we outran the rain and kept driving towards Zion in Utah.  We saw a pronghorn along the way.  

For the night, we found a beautiful campsite on public land with views of the sunset on the hills.  The wasps here make there nests underground with just a small hole to know that they're there.  It turns out I had parked right over a nest which made for an unpleasent surprise when going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Zion was another beautiful park, but very very busy.  By 9am, all of the parking in the park was full, so we took a shuttle in and another shuttle throughout the park.  Our first stop was the Virgin River Narrows which is a short walk to a shallow river with tall cliffs on both sides.  After that, we took the shuttle to the trailhead for the Middle and Lower Emerald Falls.  There wasn't a lot of water flowing but it was still cool because the trail went behind the falls, between the water and the cliff it was falling off of.  

After leaving Zion, we drove to Bryce Canyon where we camped on public land just outside the park.

Bryce Canyon is also in Utah and is known for its hoodoos, tall pillars of rock.  Although there weren't as many people as at Zion, we still needed a shuttle to get around the park.  We hiked the Navajo loop which took us through Wall Street and past Two Bridges.  Later in the day, once the traffic had died down, we drove to Inspiration Point and Rainbow Point.  There was a Bristlecone Trail at Rainbow Point, so we finally got to see them after being rained out at the Great Basin.

Now we're on our way to Capitol Reef, also in Utah (3 of 5).