Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: A Compilation

Geology is everywhere. You can't escape it. No matter where you go it is under you and all around you. Some of the joy in my life is learning as much as I can while I can. I'm always looking for new places, or trying to see familiar places in a new way. So it was that we set out last July to explore a strip of land between California and Colorado that turned out to lie pretty close to the 39th parallel of latitude (although we didn't constrain ourselves to it). My blogs on the journey turned out to be a six month project with more than thirty posts. I've gathered them all here so I can add a new blerie (blog series) to my sidebar, along with the Other California, Time Beyond Imagining (the Colorado Plateau), a Convergence of Wonders (the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rocky Mountains), Underneath the Volcano (Yosemite), and the Airliner Chronicles (a little bit of everywhere).

We had a few simple rules about our journey:

...we allowed an ultimate goal of reaching Rocky Mountain National Park, but we would plan our route no more than a day or two in advance...

...we would try to visit only places we had never been before, or hadn't been since childhood...

...if we did visit familiar sites, we would search out something new about the place...

...we would come home when the time was right (not too road-weary, and not too homesick)...

...and we promised ourselves to stop any time either of us wanted to snap a picture...

So, here's what happened....

Setting out on the Road: An overview of the trip, and a definition of a vagabond ( an itinerant wanderer, basically).

Crossing the Sierra Nevada: We set out one afternoon to cross the Sierra Nevada by way of Yosemite National Park and Tioga Pass. Along the way we checked out Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows.

Mono Lake, the Barren, Worthless Wasteland: A barren salty lake that is hardly barren at all; it helps keep millions of birds healthy on their seasonal migrations. A discussion of what is really important when it comes to desert landscapes.

Crossing the "Real" Loneliest Highway: Highway 50 gets a lot of attention as the "loneliest" highway with villages every 80 miles or so. But follow Highway 6 from Benton, California to Ely, Nevada, and you will see but a single town in 250 miles.

Aliens, Area 51 and UFOs! Desert mirages play games with our imagination along a very lonely highway.
A Trip to the Moon, and a Trip to the Mantle (well, sort of...): Off of Highway 6, we explored the strange Lunar Crater Volcanic Field, finding cinder cones, maars, and fragments of the Earth's mantle.

A Park without its Namesake, and an "Oh, s**t" moment in Science: Great Basin National Park doesn't have a basin in it. But it does have a great many other things worthy of our time, including a famous bad moment in scientific research.

We Reach the Wasatch Front, Finding Geologic and Archaeological Violence: The Wasatch Front is the junction of the Basin and Range, the Rocky Mountains, and the Colorado Plateau. We explored Fremont Indian State Park, a spot that preserved ancient rhyolite caldera ash deposits, and hundreds of Fremont petroglyphs. It is also a spot where we saved a village in order to destroy it.

Who knew the hoodoo was in Castle Rock? We discovered a most unusual place to camp, Castle Rock in Fremont Indian State Park. It's a great place to see hoodoos.

Having a "Swell" Time on the Reef! We start across the Colorado Plateau by traversing the San Rafael Swell, a huge dome that is one of the largest geologic structures in Utah. The "reef' is a spectacular monocline that forms the eastern edge of the Swell.

A Canyon along the Colorado River? Really? It isn't the Grand Canyon, it's Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, and it is rather spectacular. It is a critical transportion corridor for crossing the Rocky Mountain, but the engineers tried to preserve as much of the environment as they could.

A Moment of Pure Magic: The next day we reached Rocky Mountain National Park, the only actual stated goal of our trip. We spent the afternoon exploring the Bear Lake area and had a series of stunning vistas from reflections on the absolutely still lake (the photo at the top of the page is my favorite).

A Day of Black and White in the Rocky Mountains: We get hit by the first of several fierce storms in the Rockies, in this instance while walking around Sprague Lake. It was a wet couple of days for everyone across the region (there were even a few rainfall total records set).

In the Former Realm of Glaciers: We take a delightful hike to Nymph and Dream Lakes, and take in a variety of glacial features and some of the oldest rocks to be found anywhere in the American West. And then we got hit with an even worse storm than the day before!

In the Former Realm of Glaciers...Part II, on Trail Ridge: We turn towards home and cross the Continental Divide by way of Trail Ridge. We find the headwaters of the Colorado River, and an ominous dead forest.

The Birth of the Colorado River and Arboreal Apocalypse: Exploring the headwaters of the Colorado River in Kawuneeche Valley and the Never Summer Range. A river is flooding in front of us, and the forest is dying behind us.

Coke, Ancient Ice, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: Heading home through central Colorado. See if you can figure out what this title means!

A Little Mystery on the North Rim: And that is what this short post is; a mystery question.

A Canyon Where Cameras Stand Sideways: Black Canyon of the Gunnison in western Colorado is one of the most rugged 9and scenic) places a person can imagine. In some places it is deeper than it is wide. It exposes some of the Proterozoic crustal rocks that are not all that easy to find in this part of the country.

A Problem With Vagabonding: Yellow Line Fever  We follow a long, lonely highway through the Paradox Valley, and find the town of Bedrock. Fred and Wilma weren't home...and then we were in Utah!

Sun and Rock in Arches National Park: A hot day and a beautiful evening in Arches National Park.

Sun (and Moon) and Rock Revisited in Arches National Park We spend a morning exploring one of the most beautiful national parks in the world. And it's not just arches to be seen there.

Whispers of the Past in Stone: The story of past beings is told in stone in a couple of ways...on this day we saw two of them: petroglyphs and footprints. And a murder of crows.

A Magical Evening in the Mesozoic: A late evening exploration of Capitol Reef National Park, which protects a giant monocline, the Waterpocket Fold.

Crossing Through the Escalante River Country: We follow Highway 12 through what once was one of the most isolated and rugged corners of the country. It's still a challenging landscape and spectacular drive.

A Hoodoo Homily in Three Parts: We explore parts of Bryce Canyon we've never seen before, and at times we've never been there. In part one we check out the southern end of the park.

A Hoodoo Homily, Part Two: A late evening exploration of Fairyland Point and understanding the Aquarius Plateau. Hoodoos in pastel colors...

Hoodoo Homily, A Land of Glowing Rocks: Bryce Canyon without the summer crowds. How did we do it? We got up early! And the rocks were glowing, too.

A Hoodoo Homily Postscript: Red Canyon  There is another aspect of the Claron Formation that one doesn't see in Bryce Canyon National Park. We explore Red Canyon in the Sevier River country.

A Heavenly Canyon of Sand - Mukuntuweap: We arrive in Zion National Park on a scorching hot day. Where do you go? The Narrows of the Virgin River.

A Bit of Mukuntuweap in the Morning (it was one in a trillion): The impending ending of our journey gets me thinking about time and mortality. We explore Zion National Park in the early morning.

Playing "Where's Waldo" with Bighorn Sheep in Zion National Park: An earlier post about our discovery of a herd of bighorn sheep near the Zion Tunnel.

Leaving Behind the Colorado Plateau (almost): Zion National Park has a higher and more verdant section: the Kolob Canyons. We take a look before setting out across the Basin and Range Province. Would the aliens get us???  

More Hooved Animals on the Road...and a Quick Quiz Question  Another earlier post about the herd of wild horses we saw near Tonopah, Nevada. The answer to the quiz question can be found here.

Clicking My Heels, Because.... well, there's no place like home. At all. No matter where you go, the geological story will be different. We cross the last great barrier between we, the vagabonds, and our home in the Central Valley. And the Sierra Nevada is a beautiful mountain range, even after all the wonders of our journey across the 39th.

Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: Clicking my heels, because....

...well, there's no place like home...

After a two week journey across the 39th parallel exploring the geology of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, we were finally to the last stage, the last mountain range between us and home in the Central Valley. It was the Sierra Nevada of California

It's no small barrier: the Sierra Nevada is the largest single mountain range in the United States, and for 400 miles it rises as a nearly inaccessible wall of solid rock. It has been a barrier to human and animal travel for thousands of years. Along the highest part of the Sierra Crest, from Sequoia National Park to Yosemite National Park, a distance of  least 150 miles, only one throughgoing road crosses the crest, at Tioga Pass where we started our journey two weeks earlier. We crossed Sage Hen Summit, and the mountains came into view. Even though it was late July, snow still covered large parts of the high country. It had been that kind of year (compare to the extreme dry conditions we are seeing now).

The Sierra Nevada is such an extraordinary mountain range that it can dwarf other incredible mountains nearby. In any other region, a hundred mile long mountain range exceeding 14,000 feet in elevation would be world renowned. Instead, the White Mountains are barely known to most people, even in California. Likewise, a chain of thirty or so active volcanoes, some only a few hundred years old, would be getting far more attention in 2012 than good ol' Yellowstone. But they don't appear in the news very often, and not on the Discovery Channel either. As far as I can tell, there aren't even any conspiracy nuts weaving stories about UFOs and harmonic convergences at all.

We came across Highway 120 and wound our way around the north side of the Mono Craters (above), and stopped to enjoy a panorama of the Sierra Crest on the east boundary of Yosemite National Park. The prominent peaks in the picture below are Ritter and Banner, two spectacular mountains that were left outside the boundaries of Yosemite. I suspect the reason involved possible mineral sources in the metamorphic rocks (they are protected from development by their designation as a wilderness area).

A little further to the north we could see the Lyell Crest and the countryside near June Lake. The glaciers wreaked havoc with the topography there. In one spot the river flows towards the mountain range rather than away from it (by some incredible coincidence it is called Reversed Creek).

And then Mt. Dana, the second highest peak in Yosemite (below). We were close to our home territory, and it might have been quicker to go home the way we came two weeks earlier, but we still had a sense of curiosity about the other pass, Sonora, a little north of Yosemite National Park. We were tired, but we still wanted to explore...a little bit.

Something caught our eye in the foreground. There is almost nothing that can live on a surface of recently erupted pumice ash. Water simply percolates through and what little clay that forms in a few hundred years dries up within a few weeks of the last snows. But that was the kind of summer we had. Late July and spring was only beginning. The pumice flats east of the Mono Craters were alive with colorful wildflowers.

They certainly weren't tall. I was down on my hands and knees trying to get pictures of the common ones, like the magenta flowers above, that I assume is some kind of Monkeyflower (corrections are most welcome).

There were a few spindly lupines hanging on as well...

And some delicate yellow daisy types (again, any id is welcome!). We stopped for a sandwich in Lee Vining, and headed north on Highway 395, and then east in Highway 108 over Sonora Pass (9,624 feet). We stopped for a few minutes at the Leavitt Falls Overlook to see the snowmelt-swollen cascade pouring out of the hanging valley below the pass.

The road climbs steeply and becomes a narrow byway. If you have one of those RV's don't try this one! We passed meadows and waterfalls that had an air of familiarity. We were almost home. We had had a good trip, and seen a great many new places, and seen familiar places in a new way. But it was time to wrap things up.

What did we find? There's no place like home. Not the Dorothy's "We're not in Kansas anymore" kind of 'no place'. Literally: there is no place like home. One of the joys of teaching geology is the ability to say that you can never escape it (in a good sense, most of the time). Wherever you go there is a geological story that is distinct from everywhere else, and the story is almost invariably fascinating. We could have picked any line across the earth's surface, and we would have found something unique (but I must say the richness of the American West is unparalleled).

We crossed the pass and started down the canyon of the Stanislaus River. In two hours the vagabonds were relaxing once again in their own home. The dog and the cat were certainly happy to see us again. It was good to be back, but it wasn't a week before we wished we were on the road again.

For those of you who have been following this series, I hope you have enjoyed the journey!



Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: Leaving Behind the Colorado Plateau (almost)

The crowds were building in Zion National Park that morning in July, one of the last days of our vagabonding journey across the 39th parallel. It was time to get away. We were examining the geology of a swath of Colorado, Utah and Nevada, exploring as many new places as we could find. After two weeks on the road we were tired, dirty, and actually not quite ready to leave the beautiful Colorado Plateau. Surely there was one more place we could find before we set out across the Nevada desert?

Zion Canyon has sometimes been described as being like Yosemite Valley but without the glaciers. I find that spurious, as each park is unique beyond comparing, but there is one distinct similarity: most of the millions of visitors concentrate in the valleys, and far fewer people visit a particularly spectacular area of each park that is remote and higher. In Yosemite, that place is Tuolumne Meadows. In Zion, it is the Kolob Canyons (also called the Kolob Fingers).

The Kolob Canyons Section of the park is accessed from Interstate 15 between St. George and Cedar City, which just happened to be the route we were following that afternoon. We turned off and followed the five mile road to the end. There are no campgrounds or developments beyond a small visitor center near the freeway. There are a couple of trailheads that provide access to some pretty spectacular wilderness areas in the higher reaches of the park, including the Kolob Arch, which has been claimed as the largest free-standing arch in the world.

The Kolob Canyons are smaller than the gorge of Zion Canyon, and formed not from headward erosion of the Colorado River system, but from erosion along the scarp of the Hurricane fault. The Hurricane is a normal fault (east side up) that marks the edge of the Colorado Plateau in this region. Elevations are higher, so more vegetation is present to contrast with the red sandstones.

It had been a wet year, so wildflowers were relatively easy to find. Below is some Indian Paintbrush that we found near Taylor Creek.

It was peaceful, and hardly a soul was to be seen on the road. But it was getting late, and we still had to cross most of Nevada. We headed out to Cedar City and then set out across one of the loneliest stretches of the Basin and Range province in Nevada. No, not the tourist-filled Highway 50, but a really lonely road that drives people to distraction and hallucination.

 Highway 375: The Extraterrestrial Highway...

I wonder what kind of alien they made the jerky out of?

Luckily we weren't abducted and experimented on, at least as far as I know. We passed Area 51 somewhere out there, and had a nice moment looking at a herd of wild horses.

 We pulled into Tonopah and settled in for the last night of our trip....

Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: A Bit of Mukuntuweap in the Morning (it was one in a trillion)

"If I could I'd tell you now

there are no roads that do not bend

the days like flowers bloom and fade

and they do not come again.

We've only got these times we're living in...."

Words and music by Kate Wolf (1981)

Kate Wolf was a wonderful songwriter who died far too early. She wrote some beautifully evocative songs, many of which were set in Central California where I live. My list of road songs includes quite a few of her works, including "Across the Great Divide" (here is a YouTube version with Nanci Griffith and Emmylou Harris), and Redtail Hawk (here is Kate singing the song).

"These Times We're Living In" is a song about a long-term loving relationship, but the lines spoke to me in a geological sense while I was sifting through the images I shot in Zion National Park last July (the canyon was originally called Mukuntuweap). We were on our vagabonding journey across the geology of Nevada, Utah and Colorado, and we were rapidly approaching the end of our trip. The words remind me not so much of how little time we have, but more the luck of living in the times that we do.

In the geologic sense...

What am I talking about? In a geological sense, an incredible place like Zion exists for only an brief moment. The Colorado Plateau, the vast province that includes Zion National Park, has been a relatively stable region that existed mostly at or below sea level for more than a half-billion years. Several tens of millions of years ago, the province began to rise, and erosion began to eat away at some of the thick sedimentary layers that had covered the crustal rocks. But the canyon that we call Zion did not come into being until the last few million years when the Colorado River established a connection to the Gulf of California.

As the Colorado River cut deeper into the plateau country, headward erosion along the tributary streams like the Virgin River formed the Narrows and steep gorge at Zion that we see today. In a few more million years, the park that we see today will be gone, replaced by a landscape that will be very different. Eventually most of the rocks of the Colorado Plateau and their 700 million year story will be eroded away, all the way down to the Proterozoic bedrock. A fascinating story will be gone, as if it had never happened.

When Zion is gone, there will undoubtedly be other beautiful canyons and gorges elsewhere to be enjoyed by whatever intelligent life form is inhabiting our planet. But there will never be another place quite like Zion. I've been lucky enough in my life to see it several times. It will be many human generations before it looks substantially different. But the changes are occurring in our time, too.

Can you see the white scar crossing the forest in the center of the picture above? It's also in the top photo on the left side. It is the debris from a very recent rockfall. I don't know if it is the same rockfall, but not long ago we were camped in the lower valley we heard rumbling and crashing sounds in the distance, and a few moments later a huge dust cloud rolled down the valley. Zion had just become a slightly larger valley.

We got up and packed our gear first thing in the morning, and started wandering about the park. We were ahead of the crowds, and were in no rush to leave quickly, since our day involved a long drive across the hot desert. We drove up to the Zion Tunnel and stopped to snap photos whenever anything caught our eyes. It was a beautiful morning, one of close to 2 trillion that have taken place at this latitude and longitude since the Earth first formed out of the void of space. It wasn't the best ever, but it was most certainly not the worst. But I can't be the best judge; I only get about 30,000 chances to compare sunrises (if I am fortunate), and I've only seen about a dozen at Zion. That is a rather vanishingly small sample in the big picture.

We've only got the times we're living in. And there is a lot to try and see in our brief time...

By mid-morning the park was getting crowded again, so we headed out towards Cedar City.

Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: A Heavenly Canyon of Sand - Mukuntuweap

We'd been on the road for more than two weeks last July, on our vagabonding journey across the 39th parallel in Nevada, Colorado and Utah, and we could feel home calling. We had been going along, rarely making plans more than a day or two in advance, and we had explored many new and fascinating places that we had never seen before. And yet...we were sort of planning to cross the Wasatch Front in Utah and start across the Basin and Range province, but I took one last look at the computer, and noted that a cancellation had opened up a single campsite that day at Zion National Park. What the heck, I thought, let's take in one more national park. We headed south and west from Bryce Canyon and Red Canyon.

It was hot. Around 107 degrees. Sitting around in camp in the sun was an untenable proposition, so we erected the tent, and set about finding a cool place to hang out for awhile. In the main part of Zion National Park, that pretty much means upstream, in the Narrows.

The original name of the park appears to have been Mukuntuweap, which translates into something along the lines of "straight canyon" in the Paiute language. In the main part of the canyon where the roads and developments are found, the description is true. At the north end, things change. The walls of Zion Canyon are steep cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, the Jurassic record of a vast sand sea that once existed across several southwestern states. Where the Virgin River has cut into the underlying softer layers the canyon walls are undercut and the canyon widens rapidly (in the sense of geologic time, but also human time; rockfalls happen constantly). At the upstream end of the valley the Virgin River cuts exclusively through the sandstone, forming a very narrow winding slickrock canyon called, quite logically, the Narrows of the Virgin River.
On the hottest days, the sun barely shines into the narrows, and it is the coolest place to hide from the heat. We retreated into the shadows and waited for the sun to set. Others were hanging out in the coolness including a cute doe and fawn.

Canyons like the Narrows of the Virgin River are spectacular to see, but can sometimes be exceedingly dangerous. There are miles of river watershed upstream, and when deep in the canyon, you can't see if thunderstorms are dumping water into the gorges upstream. In the case of a flash flood there is no place to go. Things were calm the day we were there, but we could see huge masses of driftwood from some intense flooding from just over a year ago.

As we approached the actual narrows, the canyon walls closed in, rising as much as 2,000 feet above us.

The shale layer underlying the sandstone is a barrier to the movement of groundwater, so water percolating downward through the Navajo Sandstone is forced out of the canyon walls, forming clear fresh springs. There is enough water in this section of the canyon to form a small swamp, an island of greenery beneath the red cliffs.

The sun was dropping below the horizon and the shadows in the canyon deepened. It used to be that the road end at Temple of Sinawava was one of the busiest parking lots in Zion, but with only a few dozen slots, cars would circle for a long time waiting for something to open up. It was crowded and noisy. The park service eventually instituted a shuttle bus system and no longer allows cars in the upper canyon, at least during the summer. Having experienced the canyon both ways, I can say that the shuttle system has done wonderful things for the canyon. The shuttle stops at road's end, people pile out and immediately disappear. By the time the bus leaves, the canyon is quiet again. More and more animals can be seen, and the canyon feels wilder, even though the number of visitors each year has been fairly constant.

The only problem is the that the shuttles stop operating at nightfall. Lingering in the upper canyon as we were doing introduced the potential problem of missing the last bus of the day. We started walking a little faster in the rapidly disappearing light.

I fully support the shuttle system, but one drawback from my point of view is that the lack of access in the upper canyon at night makes it very difficult to do one of my favorite summertime activities: night hiking. The spot in Zion for night-hikes was the Emerald Pools Trail. It was a truly mystical experience to walk up to the pools in the dark and stroll behind the small waterfalls. It was especially striking if the moon was shining through the falling water, or if lightning was causing explosions of light and echoing thunder (followed that particular time by a complete drenching of rain).

There were a few hazards, though. One year we were sitting behind the waterfalls, and a two or three foot wide slab of rock broke loose and fell just a few feet from some of my students. Another time I was walking in near total darkness, enjoying my other senses (it was a concrete pathway so it was hard to get off the trail). I was walking through the high brush and I heard rustling, not at my feet, but right in front of my face. OK, that was a bit much. I turned on my flashlight and found that I had almost walked face-first into a porcupine munching away at the shrubs...

The canyon walls had taken on the pastel hues of the twilight. We caught one of the last buses of the day, and returned to camp, which aside from the ants was a much more tolerable place to hang out for the night.

It got past me, but January 7 was my fourth anniversary of blogging here at Geotripper. 943 posts and counting. Here is the first one...

Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: A Hoodoo Homily postscript - Red Canyon

Our vagabonding adventure continued...

People who are in a hurry to get to Bryce Canyon National Park from the west sometimes miss a little gem of a geological site on their way in: Red Canyon. The canyon (which unlike Bryce Canyon is actually a canyon) is carved through the same formation that makes up the spires and hoodoos of Bryce, the early Cenozoic Claron. We had left Bryce and were on our way to Zion National Park, but as we passed Red Canyon, we couldn't resist stopping and taking a look.

Although Red Canyon is not a specific park, it is on national forest land, and the NFS has constructed a decent visitor center, and developed a small network of trails in the area. The short nature trail we hiked was nice and level, in contrast to the steep trails below the rim at Bryce Canyon. It gave us some up close access to several vivid orange hoodoos. Because there are fewer of the them, the spires that are there stand out as individuals. Your imagination can have some fun here.

We wandered along the trail. Over the last few days the weather had stabilized. In Colorado we had been hit with some pretty severe thunderstorm activity, but now high pressure had settled in, and the temperatures soared. Even though we were at more than 7,000 feet, it was in the high 90's, and the sunlight reflecting off the rock just made it feel hotter. By the time we reached the visitor center again, we were happy the place was air conditioned.

The heat was a bit of some concern, because Zion Canyon was several thousand feet lower and would presumably be an oven. We felt no need to rush through things when we had such a pleasant place to explore.

As we passed the mouth of Red Canyon we had a startling view of the Sevier fault zone, which raised the Paunsaugunt Plateau (that includes Bryce Canyon) relative to the Sevier River, which drains north towards the Basin and Range and the Sevier Desert. This particular part of Utah is not yet part of the Colorado River drainage, but in a short period of time (geologically) it will be captured by headward erosion, and a new Bryce Canyon will develop.

We headed south. Zion National Park was next on our vagabonding itinerary...

This link provides a nice roadguide to the geology of Red Canyon and Bryce Canyon. It refers to the Wasatch formation instead of the Claron. The two names refer to the same rock layer, but I believe Claron is the currently designated name for the formation.

Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel: Hoodoo Homily, A Land of Glowing Rocks

It's the third Hoodoo Homily (and now that I'm here there will be a fourth, probably). We had reached the two week point of our vagabonding journey across the geology of California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado last July more or less along the 39th parallel of latitude (at this point it was less, more like the 38th). We had experienced the late afternoon in the southern part of Bryce Canyon, an interesting sunset at Fairyland View, and a loud night at the campground (I suspect a geology field class was camped near by). We awoke early in the morning and headed to the some of the park's most famous and busy view points...an hour or so ahead of the tourist buses and car traffic.

The Claron Formation, the sedimentary layer responsible for the cliffs and hoodoos of Bryce Canyon, was laid down in freshwater lakes during early Cenozoic time. Iron in the sediments has oxidized into the vivid orange, pink, and red colors that make Bryce Canyon so memorable. When the sun is at a low angle, the rocks seem to glow from within. That makes mornings an especially intense time to be exploring the park.

 And the parking lots were empty! I reveled in the silence...

 Paria View offered some isolated hoodoos set against the dark forest below in the shadows.

We moved over to Bryce Point. There were two cars when we pulled up to one of the busier parking lots in the park.

The minutes were slipping away, but we saw one more chance for a serene view. We parked at Inspiration Point, and I worked my way up the steep hill to the viewpoint. It offers views into one of the most intricate and complicated of the amphitheaters. I had the point to myself, and I loved every moment.

Beyond the rim of Bryce Canyon, we could see some of the volcanic rocks in the distance that erupted millions of years after the deposition of the Claron. Some of the peaks in the distance exceed 11,000 feet in elevation.

I could hear the rumble of the buses in parking lot down below. More and more people were starting to wander up the trail. Things were returning to summer normal. It was time for us to move on.