July 16 Sunday Bryce Canyon

After breakfast today, we drove over to Bryce Canyon.  What a beautiful, unearthly place.  Wind and water carved through the canyon leaving wonderful, colorful hoodoos.  They look like a giant was playing in the sand at the beach and dripped wet sand from his hands.  We had an early lunch as the girls were "starving" (they must be going through a huge growth spurt on this trip).  Dave opted to stay with the truck as it was really hot and heat aggravates his myasthenia.  We had a hard time finding a parking place, but finally found one at the lodge.  We walked a 1/2 mile to Sunrise Point and then down into the canyon for .8 of a mile ending at Queen's Garden.  There is a hoodoo there which looks remarkably like Queen Victoria.  We decided we had had enough of the heat so we started climbing back up.  We stopped frequently for shade (when there was any) and water breaks.  When we were getting close to the top, we heard thunder so we upped the pace and finally reached the top of the canyon.  The girls said they felt a few drops of rain as we walked back to the truck, but we made it before the skies opened up.  We drove back to Zion (almost 2 hours) and stopped at a rock shop in Orderville.  Unfortunately, most of the rocks were not local and the prices were high so we moved on.  Back at camp, the girls changed into their bathing suits and Dave and I went with them down to the creek not too far from our campsite (really the same Virgin River that flows through the Narrows further north in the park, but much narrower at this point).  We found a hole for them to swim in and there was a place they could drift with the current.  They had a blast, but we had to get them out before they were done playing as we heard thunder overhead and it started to rain.  We decided to walk across the pedestrian bridge for ice cream, but when we got there it was raining a bit harder and it was later than we thought so we opted for dinner instead of cooking back at camp in the rain.  The restaurant, however, wouldn't let the girls enter as they were in bathing suits.  The girls and I walked back to camp so they could change and we got back to the restaurant for dinner.  None of us minded walking in the rain as it felt cool after our hot day.  The girls wanted to play cards again after dinner and have an early bedtime (I think we finally wore them out) so we didn't get to the ranger program again.  We will try again tomorrow night.