HOODOO YOU THINK YOU'RE FOOLIN'?

    

    Water and wind has carved Southern Utah into a wonderland of colorful rock formations.  I wrote about Arches and Canyon lands last month.  Last week I visited Zion and Bryce National Park (which has these incredible "hoodoo" towers.
      People describe the two, just 75 miles apart, as "In Zion you look up and in Bryce,  down".  Don't say that to the German hikers that are streaming past me this morning. They climb all over
these parks, from top to bottom (Bryce) 









 and ziz-zagging up the stone giants that wall the sides of  Zion Canyon. The tallest are 4000 feet high.
 
       I'm here for fun and walking long distances doesn't interest me much. In Zion, I hitched my bike to the front of a park bus and enjoyed the leisurely drive to its higher end.  After disembarking, I coasted  down the 9-mile run. Exhilarating!
 
 An artist's rendering of Zion

 
                    AND ON TO BRYCE
 
   When I woke up in the Bryce campground at 5 a.m. this morning, it was a ridiculous 36 degrees outside. Inside, maybe 37.  
  Being a sensible person I shivered over to the park's grand hotel and set up an office. A fire roars nearby -as I write this- in a huge stone fireplace. Ahhh.
     With the cold, the fire, my aching hiking feet, I almost feel like a Utah pioneer. The lodge will start serving breakfast at seven. If it doesn't warm up soon I'll have to trade in my pioneer shorts for something else. 

  Yesterday I hiked down into the park's hoodoo fairyland.

It was a successful adventure as once I got the  bottom, I did not have to be airlifted to the top.

        I'll be in the Grand Canyon this afternoon.  I can't get enough of the world's greatest hole in the ground. They don't call it "grand" for nothin'.
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