Today we moved from Williams, Arizona to the Bryce Canyon area in Utah.
We got up at 6:30 and went straight to breakfast in the lobby. I must say, we’ve been enjoying the kielbasa at the buffet here every morning!
We were all packed, checked out, and on the road by 8:15. Fueled up and passed through Flagstaff and some of the points of interest that we have visited in the past few days.
A geocache at Marble Canyon on the old Navajo Bridge brought us a bit out of the way, but we were glad for the detour! We got some NPS Passport stamps, walked across the canyon on the bridge, and patronized the gift shop.
Just a little further up the road, we stopped at Horse Shoe Bend. As we approached, traffic was parking on the sides of the road up to a quarter-mile from the parking lot. We drove into the lot, and our good parking spot streak continued, got a spot not far from the trail head. The hike was much longer than I expected, and the area was also much more crowded than I expected. To us, it actually felt busier than the Grand Canyon.
There was some major construction going on in the area, it seems like they were working on installing a viewing platform. For now, though, there are no guard rails or fences, and the surface near the edge was sandy and made us quite nervous. I laid down to get some photos.
From Horse Shoe Bend, we drove further up stream to the Glen Canyon Dam. We arrived there around 1pm, and found that all tours were sold out for the rest of the day. We watched the film in the visitor center, gathered up the information needed to log the EarthCache, then walked across the Glen Canyon Bridge before heading further north.
A geocache brought us to another site that we would not have noticed otherwise. The Toadstool Hoodoos were definitely worth the short hike to visit, and it was a nice opportunity to stretch our legs.
Though we’ve never seen Gunsmoke, we thought it would be interesting to drive by and see the movie set that was constructed in Johnson Canyon.
We arrived at our hotel in Panguitch around 8:30, had pulled chicken for dinner in our room, were showered and in bed by 10.