Scrambling around Bryce Canyon - Hugh

We travel on to Bryce Canyon. Another park for Reconnaissance Vehicles (RVs), this one a little less salubrious, even though advertised in Frommer’s etc. as “exceptional”. We are learning that this term means different things to different people. It’s fine though and it is perfectly placed for Bryce Canyon.

The eponymous Ebenezer Bryce described this canyon as “a helluva place to lose a cow”. Once you see it, you can see what he means.

Stupendous natural scenery (if you like canyons), perfect weather, and not too many people. Most of the yanks stay in their cars, or just get out for a few minutes, so we find mainly French sharing the more remote trails with us. Enjoy a terrific picnic having tramped the Navajo and Queen’s garden trails, although our kids travel almost the entire distance without setting foot on any trail.
Here’s a map for you Neil.
There are secret passages, scrambles, tunnels galore here so the kids have a good time.
Come 230 the team is tired though. Fortunately, we take the wrong bus and end up on a redundant loop going miles out of our way. At the endpoint, I make my excuses and jump off, taking an almost deserted trail 10 miles back to the RV camp while Sarah and the kids go for ice creams and fruitless trinket purchasing. I decide to run the route to get a bit of exercise, but learn to slow to a walk whenever I pass anyone, to avoid being asked whether I am alright. Perhaps this is because I am wearing a cowboy hat and running in open-toed sandals in 100 degrees heat at 9000 feet. After 8 miles and descending and ascending 2000 feet repeatedly between the rim and the canyon floor, I do finally begin to feel less than alright, but at Fairyland Point (oh yes) get chatting to some of the Americans looking over the edge and cadge a lift back to the RV park with them. Tremendous fun, and I return “home” to find that I am not even missed and that the team has had lots of fun eating ice creams, dressing up, and being bad so had to go to jail.

That night we go to the rodeo. Pretty nuts what these chaps get up to in their spare time. I think it contrasts with what they do in the day time.

The next day we ride through a slot canyon.

It turns out that our guide Hayes is a professional bull rider. He admits to earning “$2000 in about 16 seconds” only the night before which makes my tip look a little flimsy. He is 20. ‘you see a thirty year old ridin’ a bull, he’s an old fella’. His best pal was gored the same night and was at the time in intensive care having ruptured his spleen. ‘Don’t know yet if he’ll pull through’.

They have a great knack for understatement. A slot canyon is “not a great place to be if it rains.” We tell him that we hunt on horseback in the UK and he says “‘ridin a bull’s alot like jumpin’ a horse’. ‘I never broke anything but I had a knock to my chin once put me in a head brace for a year back in high school’.