A Bunch of Hoodoo

Joanne received her birthday "present" the past week--5 days of a non-complaining Keith on an adventure into the Utah wilderness: Cedar Breaks and Bryce Canyon (which we've been told twice is not actually a canyon, but that's neither here nor there).

The trip summary:

• Day 1 (Friday): Drive to Page. Stop by Lake Powell. Enjoy the wonder of cable TV (we've been cableless for over 6 years now) in our hotel room after determining cruises on the Lake were cost prohibitive.
• Day 2 (Saturday): Continue on to the Cedar Breaks area (a mini-Bryce located in between Zion & Bryce). Visit Strawberry Point. Set up camp at Te-Ah near Navajo Lake.
• Day 3 (Sunday): Visit Cedar Breaks. Make short hikes to Spectra Point and Alpine Pond (each ~2 miles). More camping fun.
• Day 4 (Monday): Stop by the last viewpoint at CB and Panguitch Lake on our way to Bryce. Venture to the far end of the park and do the Bristlecone Pine loop. Making our way back, we go to Inspiration Point. Joanne lets me do the rim trail to Bryce Point (1.3 miles) solo as her knee was locking up a bit and she feeling the altitude a bit, so she drives and meets me there. Make another short hike to Mossy Cave, just outside of the Park, before the Tropic-al part of our vacation (the town of Tropic is 7 miles from Bryce). We splurge for the upgrade from the motel room to the excessively pine cabin.
• Day 5 (Tuesday): Queens Garden and Wall Street loop hike. Start the trek home a day early, deciding the virtues of a relaxing day at home (Wednesday) was more appealing than more walking. So we headed back around noon or so and came back via 89A through Fredonia/Jacob Lake (entrance to North Rim).

Top 5 highlights:

• Tom, the yellow bellied marmot, appearing out of nowhere at Spectra Point. We were overlooking what we thought was a sheer cliff, and Tom randomly crawls up over the ledge to sun himself for a while. We we got back to the trailhead, we saw it was a double cliff--he crawled up an area that was maybe 10 feet above a flat area before the big drop off.
• Strawberry Point. I think this would rank a little lower if it wasn't first, as it was a view point that came after a 10 mile, 30-minute dirt road. It was the most expansive view though.
• Doh, a deer, a female deer(s). After breaking down camp, I saw two deer go through the campground, passing a path Joanne was on from the facilities. They were so quiet, Joanne didn't see them.
• The trail from Inspiration Point to Bryce Point. I wish Joanne would have made it--it was interesting to see the transition of the features from one point to the other.
• Wall Street.
• Bonus: the mountain decent on 89A from Jacob Lake. Because of the amount of dirt road travel, I was glad we took the Pilot. This portion made me reassess that position. It did get off to a slow start however, as after non seeing another car going in our direction for 30 miles or so, some d!@#$!t (Joanne approved term) in a camper pulls out in front of me at the turn at Jacob Lake. He waits 6 seconds and I'm not tailing him for way too long going under the speed limit. But after that, it was a beautifully windy road made for the TSX (or any handling+ car). The 20-mile continuous downhill grade coming out of that was also mildly interesting.
  

Other observances:

• Lake Powell is expensive--$80+/per for the dinner cruise; $55 for the same cruise minus dinner. The breakfast cruise was feasible (<$35), but it doesn't leave the bay and would have required us waking up too early on a vacation. In hindsight, we maybe should have pushed on past Page (though Joanne really enjoyed dinner at Stromboli's) to allow for more time in Utah. If we could've tightened things up a bit, maybe we stay the extra day and go to Zion or Escalante, or do another trail at Bryce (part of the Peekaboo Loop). However, I can't say either of us had a strong desire to do more hiking, but I would have preferred less driving.
• We discussed our best vacations, and they all have a nature component: Hawaii, Interlaken part of the Europe trip, our California coast roadtrip. But I am a strong proponent of indoor plumbing and an actual bed--the cot/sleeping bag combo didn't really work for me.
  
• I think I also settled on the fact that I'm a time-share type person--I want a good home-base with some of the comforts of home (ie kitchen) that is a nice enough place to lounge around without the feeling the need to do something, or close enough to something that you can wander our of it and do something you normally can't (ie the beachfront room in Hawaii). A campground doesn't quite fit the bill, but a cabin would (the "cabin" in Tropic, was technically a cabin, but the place was more of a detached hotel room.)
• Joanne says I mostly behaved, but she wants something else for her birthday. So I obviously committed a faux pas somewhere...