After a fun couple of days in Springdale it was time to hit the road again. This was going to be a big drive day, seeing us try to go from southern Utah all the way to Idaho, but we wanted to make a not so quick detour to Bryce Canyon National Park along the way. It was going to be about a three hour drive in the RV. There was a shorter, much windier route going through Zion but we elected not to risk it. We were still traumatized by driving the RV through Jerome, Arizona.
Once we got off the interstate, the drive to Bryce Canyon was really nice. We drove through some small towns and then the Dixie National Forest. Eventually we arrived and once again met up with Jeanette and Stu. Due to our limited time we decided to go on a medium length single hike that would give us the flavor of the park.
We ended up hiking the Sunrise Trail, which took us down into the canyon, crossing numerous dry creek beds, and through the world’s largest collection of Hoodoos. The geology and climate at Bryce Canyon is responsible for all the hoodoos. I’m sure someone else can explain it better, but hoodoos are columns of rock that are formed out of soft stone via erosion caused by freeze/thaw cycles. Not unique to Bryce Canyon, but it’s said that nowhere else are this many of them.
The hike was awesome and I took way too many pictures. I have no doubt that there was a bunch more cool stuff to experience at Bryce, but it did feel like we picked a fun trail that highlighted what the park was best known for. The entire hike took about 2 hours, and included some decent elevation change going from top to bottom and then back up.
After saying goodbye to Jeanette and Stue for the duration of our trip, we headed north in the direction our next real destination, Helena, Montana. We didn’t have a firm stopping point in mind for this night, meaning to just drive as long as we safely could, but we were hoping to make it to Devil Creek Reservoir, just north of the Utah border with Idaho, which seemed like a nice little park to spend the night at and wake up to in the morning.
We were driving north on State Highway 89 and at one point Google wanted us to cut over to Interstate 15 but it looked like that wouldn’t save us much time as we can’t really take advantage of the 80 mph speed limit in the RV, so we decided to stick with HW 89. As it turns out HW89 is actually a designated “Scenic Byway”, and boy was it ever. Definitely one of the prettiest drives we’ve made in the RV.
As per our custom, we stopped at a random yet inspiring pullout just off the highway to enjoy our dinner with a dusk-time view. This one was overlooking Piute Reservoir. We were not making the best time, but the views made up for that.
Passing Salt Lake City at about 1am we realized that we were not going to be able to make it to Devil Creek, so instead aimed at a decent looking rest stop about half an hour north of Salt Lake City, but when we got there it was full. Lucky for us, there was another Love’s one exit away. That’s right, another Love’s!
Bonus Pictures
