Day Seven - Bryce to....St. George?? UT (Aug. 2, 2013)

At the start of Queens Garden

It turns out that I had not made any plans for the night of Aug. 2.  I think in my planning phase I decided that we needed a bit of flexibility in case maybe we wanted to stay longer at Bryce or go on to Vegas so I left this day open.  Well, as it turned out, we decided maybe we'd like to stay at Bryce for another night.  Bryce did not agree.  There were no vacancies available so we would have to move on.  Sad face.

Before the fight

Before we left, though, we still had to hike.  Since we'd gotten there late last night we hadn't gotten in our hike for this park.  Because of the condition I was now in (shattered legs), Steve picked out a relatively tame hike for our Bryce adventure.  Especially for us who'd already done the Canyon and lived.  Queens Garden to Navajo Point to the Rim and back to Queens Garden.  Easy peasy.  It was a total of 2.9 miles.  Pfft.  Please.  That's such an easy hike, it is almost embarrassing for us hikers to admit we'd even consider.   Humph.

After my harrowing experience in the Canyon I should be glad for such an easy hike!  I think I may need mental help.  Hubris.  The gods love it.

We went to the General Store and picked up something for lunch and some waters. 

Then to Queens Garden we went.  The whole hike took two hours, but only because we really futzed around.  See video below.

The never ending rock fight.

Navajo point area

Otherwise, I'm sure we could've done it quicker, but we had no where to go really and we were having fun.  The park was beautiful and the hoodoos were great to look at.  There were some prime photos to be taken, and the view from down below was vastly different than up on the rim.  It is so sad that so few tourists ever get to see this view of things.  Why?  Because so many choose to stay close to their cars and see the sights by the "seat of their pants."  When we visited Yellowstone a few years back we hiked the trails there pretty much every day and every day we'd only see a handful of people on the trails.  But once we would get back the parking area it was wall-to-wall people.   They'd get out of their cars and walk to the geyser or hot pot or whatever was being highlighted.  They'd take a picture, walk back to their cars and drive on.  No one takes the time to really see these parks.  They only see the surface of these beautiful sites.  It's a shame.

Looking up the hoodoos from down below.

So after our hike at Bryce we headed out.  We stopped at Ruby's Old West town.  Waste of time.  If you don't like rocks, no need to visit.  We did do a geocache after this and got a U.S. Army coin to move along which I am going to do soon.

Speed limits along this part of the road were 75 and 80 so we were cruising.  It's amazing how fast these hybrid golf carts can go!  Impressive!  We made it to the city of St. George by about 5 pm.  St. George is midway between Bryce and Vegas and there was nowhere else to go.  That was the only city around, so we decided to bunk down here.  I guess because of its proximity and being the only game around it wasn't such a shock that the town had few hotel rooms to spare.  We ended up in a Towne Place Residence by Marriott.  That was after checking the Best Western, the regular Marriott, and one other hotel that was also totally booked.  Even the Towne Place only had one or two rooms that were empty.

The end of the trail.

St. George turned out to be a nice little place.  They had an OLIVE GARDEN!! Even we don't have an Olive Garden at home (except in Laurel).  So we had dinner at Steve's favorite restaurant, one that offers a never ending salad bowl and breadsticks.  He was in heaven. 

Another thing to recommend St. George besides the Olive Garden.  Did you know that parts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were filmed in St. George.  I told you!  Totally cool city.