Bryce, Zion and Vegas, Baby! Day 4

On Sunday, April 8th, we were up in the morning and driving to Bryce Point when we came across this mule deer herd.  The are quite tame and have no fear of humans. 

Denice and I got the idea that we could walk Peekaboo Trail by starting downhill from Bryce Point, deep into the canyon.  The reason that we thought this was a good idea was because we would only have to worry about walking uphill at the end of the trail when we returned to Bryce Point.

I am here to testify that on Peekaboo Trail, no matter which way you walk on the loop, it is all uphill.  Yup, all uphill. Never down.  I have no idea how this is possible but we always were walking up hill.  Both of us were blowin' half way through this hike and we really bit off more than we could do.  This hike took us five hours and although we had drinks we did not bring lunch, which might have helped. 

This part is the bad news.  The trail that we are going to walk on, including the snow and ice, can be viewed from this picture.  This picture also shows how far down we are going to be walking and this is just the connector trail to Peekaboo from Bryce Point.  Yikes!

The good news is we saw all of this:

Despite the physical struggles (and the snow) of a five hour hike, we were both glad that we had the chance to see this wonderous scenery, like none other that we have seen.  Amazing.

After lunch, we decided to take it easy and drive the Highway 63 through the park from the southern points back to the lodge road in the north.  We started at Rainbow Point as the afternoon sun begins to set.

Next it was on to Black Birch Canyon to see more snow still nestled in the valleys.

On to Ponderosa Canyon with no sighting of Adam, Hoss or Joe.  But we did see this.

On to Agua Canyon where the only water was more evidence of frozen snow.

Then on to the Natural Bridge.

At Farview Point, we were met one of many spirit ravens who guide us on every vacation we go on.  Of course, this spirit raven appeared to be more interested in his own thing, but we understood.

Paria View founds us looking at this.

That night we had another great meal in the Lodge (prime rib for me and another round of buffalo stew for Denice) and spent our last night in our room in Bryce.

For all the photos from this, visit my Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gniebuhr/sets/72157629454776210/