Bryce Canyon

My friend Ami and I were planning on going to VA to do some sightseeing and baby shopping with my mom.  Well, that didn't work out (standby travel makes life interesting!), so we decided to take a road trip to Bryce Canyon instead.

Our plan was to sleep in a motel one night, and then camp the other two.

We drove out Thursday, and stayed in the Motel.  When we got there, we were both exhausted and fell asleep.  We woke up around 9:30 that night and decided to get some dinner.  Well, that was easier said than done.  In a little town like Tropic, UT everything closes at 9.  We drove to another city nearby, and literally as we got there the lights were turned off and it closed.  We tried about 4 different restaurants/diners, and they were all closed.

Finally we found an open store, and we bought some food to eat back in our room.

Friday morning we woke up, packed up, and went to get some breakfast.  Well, we got there late and had just barely missed breakfast hours.  So we had lunch for breakfast, instead.  Grilled cheese for breakfast, is not that great, in my opinion.

Then we went back to where we were staying and started setting up our tent.  It took us about 1 hour 15 minutes.  It's a huge tent, and it was ridiculously windy, but we did it!

The day before we stopped at Ami's brothers house on the way.  He said "I'd pay good money to see a pregnant woman and a woman with unexplained seizures set up a tent."  It was hilarious, and we did awesome!

Then we headed to Bryce Canyon.  Ami had been there before, but I hadn't.  We went at the best time because everything was open.  Bryce Canyon gets snow 200 days out of the year, and it gets a lot of snow, depending on the month.

Ami and her fancy camera

(Do you think if I put one of those on my baby registry someone would buy me one?  hint hint)

Natural Bridge

One of my favorite spots.  Due to erosion, one day it won't be there anymore.

One of my other favorite spots.  I think this is called Inspiration Point, but I can't remember.

We were able to stop and see all of the viewpoints.  We did a little bit of hiking (more like walking), and had a lot of fun.  

We got back to our tent around 6:30 to find that the wind gusts had tried to take our tent out of commission.  Some nice person had stopped by and tried to fix it for us.  However, one of the fiberglass tent poles had buckled, and wasn't holding up as well as it should have.  We got some duct tape and Ami fixed it (she's very talented).

Friday morning we woke up early, went to breakfast (we actually made it!), and then we went to hike up to this little waterfall.  It was really pretty.  There was also a cave that we could have hike to in the same area, but we chose the waterfall (we weren't up to doing both).  

Afterwards we went back to Bryce Canyon and stopped at the visitors center.  We watched a video, I took advantage of the free wifi, saw the museum, and bought some souvenirs. 

Then we went and got some lunch at a restaurant that is owned by a friend.  They had tasty food.  Afterwards, we needed to rest.  So we headed back to the tent.  Ami took a nap, and I did some reading.  Then, the wind gusts came, and our tent got blown over.  Again.  We tried to fix it, and did.  But we were unsure as to whether or not we should chance it out and stay in the tent another night, or if we should just get a room.  

I called Connor and he looked up the weather info for us.  There was a weather advisory for our area, advising of wind gusts up to 45 mph, until Midnight.  That was the deciding factor.  We took the tent down, which was difficult with the wind gusts, and upgraded to a room.

Sunday morning we drove home.  All in all, it was a great little vacay.  We had a lot of fun.  Bryce Canyon is really beautiful.  I'd love to go back one day with Connor and little baby no-name.