The weather went a bit wobbly on us this week, we started in beautiful sunshine on Lake Powell and ended with snow falling as we walked around our campsite in the middle of Utah.  It’s still chilly in Salt Lake as I write this but the forecast is for warmer days ahead, which is just as well as we’ve ordered kayaks to go boating from our most popular shopping destination, Walmart, there is virtually nothing that store doesn’t provide us with!

The drive to Lake Powell from Monument Valley was another stunning trip, passing out of the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the US, into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument which is an area larger than even Yellowstone and so called as along with the geology of the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Canyonlands makes up the largest single stretch of geological history on the planet unbroken by glacial erosion.  Well, whatever it means, geologists get very excited about the rocks around here and we have to say we have too as they are so beautiful!

So back to Lake Powell, this is another manmade lake, it’s the second tallest dam after the Hoover and dams the Colorado above the Grand Canyon.  Lake Powell straddles the borders of Utah and Arizona which meant we were never sure what time zone we were in as Arizona doesn’t have daylight saving, while Utah does.  We got slightly confused as the state line crosses the middle of the campsite, we may well have lost or gained an hour but we never did figure it out!  One thing that Lake Powell does is boating and we didn’t wish to disappoint them so we hired an eight-seater runabout with a 150hp outboard which went like the clappers!  We drove it up to Antelope Canyon which is a very beautiful canyon that narrows as you proceed up it and which you must dodge lots of people on kayaks and paddle boards, including one girl doing handstands on hers (nope, no idea why).  You can hire houseboats on Lake Powell and spend up to a fortnight exploring it all the way up the Colorado, these boats top out at $18,000 a week but do sleep 20 people but still not really tempted.

After our day on the water we were off to Zion National Park, which before we arrived in the US we’d never heard of.  The reason we went is that we have a guide to the 58 national parks and it says the second best hike in the whole parks system is in Zion, problem was we discovered that as the hike is over 50% wading through the waters of the Virgin River (nope didn’t think I’d ever enter another virgin in my lifetime but there you go …) you have to wait until the water subsides from the snow melt and is running at less than 150 cubic feet per second.  The water when we arrived was running at 700 cubic feet and they don’t expect to open the Narrows, as the hike is called, until the beginning of June at the earliest.

Despite my disappointment (I’m not sure Alex was as disappointed), I loved Zion it has the most incredible sheer cliffs down from high mesas with the Virgin river running along the bottom of the canyon. It was called Zion by Mormon settlers as it provided them with a place of sanctuary and if it weren’t so busy with thousands of tourists it would still be such.  We climbed the ‘strenuous’ hike of Angels Landing, about six miles and an elevation of 1,500 feet to a peak around 6,500 feet.  The top of which you have to haul yourself up along chains anchored to the rock, it was almost as busy as the M40 on a Friday night, this despite the sign at the start stating that seven people have died on the hike since 2006.  The views from the top are majestic back down into the canyon with the river running through it and across to the other peaks in the park and the winding road that brings visitors in and out.

After two days in Zion and more walking than any other park so far, Alex’s activity watch recorded over 35,000 steps one day, we had to leave to visit Bryce Canyon.  We decided to visit this park because back in October in our Detroit hotel the running machine had a video of the canyon that Alex ran through and she felt she’d like to see it in person.  I have to say a big thankyou to whoever made that machine as this is another park with rock formations like no other on earth.  The plateau is worn down by the 180 days of below freezing weather that cracks the rocks and erodes softer rock below a layer of harder compressed clay leaving numerous ‘windows’ and spires that are called Hoo Doos.  The Ute (that isn’t an Australian utility vehicle but the name of the local native American tribe) believe that the previous inhabitants of the valley offended the gods and were turned to stone in punishment.  You can see why as the many of the hoo doos look incredibly like humans, one really looked like a woman standing in the distance and others had numerous ‘faces’ in them. 

We walked along the rim on the evening of our arrival and the next day we walked down into the amphitheatres that make up the park to look more closely at the formations.  This is where the weather began to play a part, as stated Bryce has 180 days where the temperature drops below freezing, and when we arrived there was still snow on the ground from winter.  As we drove in on the second day we were met by a snow flurry but persevered with our walking clothes and layers on we were quite warm and it was well worth it as the sun came through and warmed us as we spent the majority of the day wandering in awe of the hoo doos.

On Friday 28^th, my birthday, we drove from Bryce along the scenic Utah Highway 12 through the Dixie National Forest and again through the Grand Staircase, and yet again we had stunning scenery.  We crossed into a region called the Devils Backbone a region that has the Henry Mountains (the last to be mapped in the US mainland) overlooking checkerboard rocks and numerous canyons so difficult to traverse the road wasn’t completed until the 1930s.  We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called the Devils Backbone Grill which is owned by a Buddhist and run by Mormons, not sure what the directions are like but they obviously don’t want their guests to get fat as Alex’s trout salad was on the small side!  I phoned, and tried to phone, members of my family but the signal kept cutting out as we climbed the mountains on the far side of the backbone and through what was dangerously looking like a blizzard at one point.  We reached our campsite, Palisade State Park, where the girl who checked us in said she’d never met anyone from England before, went for a walk and it snowed!  I can honestly say it’s the first time its snowed on my birthday.  We locked ourselves in Reg and clandestinely drank several lagers (Utah was a dry state for a long period of time and there are still some restrictions on drinking in public) and played canasta, very rock and roll!

Saturday, we drove up to Salt Lake City noting that the churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints were becoming bigger and more ornate as we went.  We parked Reg opposite our hotel as we are enjoying a ‘weekend break’ and rather than going to see Johnny Mathis, who was in town, went to a performance of Barber’s Adagio for strings (introduced to me by one William Orbit many years ago!), his Violin Concerto Opus 14 and some Brahms at the Utah Symphony.  We both loved it, really beautiful music, only slightly marred by the fidgeting 10-year-old in front and the row of ancients behind who in between coughing rustled their sweet wrappers such that Alex gave them a Paddington Bear stare that would chill any normal human! 

Sunday is drawing to a close as I write this and you won’t be surprised to hear that we were slightly under the weather this morning and consequently decided against going to the Tabernacle for Sunday service which is meant to be incredible for the choir alone. 

Thank you to everyone for their birthday wishes and we’ll be back with our next instalment in a week’s time!

M