Tuesday morning I got up at 5:30am and checked myself out. I wanted
to get to Bryce Canyon early to get a first-come, first-serve camping
spot. Here's my first view of hoodoos just outside of Bryce in the
early morning light.
The guy at the entrance station warned me that the camp had entirely filled the night before, but if I waited until people started to check out, I should be able to get a spot.
The self-registration system is that you fill out a envelope and stub, clip the stub to a post at your chosen campsite, and deposit your money in the envelope. A ranger comes around occasionally, verifies that you've paid, then writes in big numbers the date that you'll check out and clips that to your post. So I just needed to find an empty campsite that had "19" clipped to the post, and it turned out that there were plenty of those available.
Possibly I was supposed to wait for a ranger to come and remove the "19" markers from the empty campsites before I claimed one. But I just clipped my new stub in front of an old "19" marker, and when I came back later, they'd taken the "19" and left a "20" with no snarky comments.
Before I could complete the registration I had to wander around looking for awake campers who could break a $20. Handy tip for this sort of trip: bring tens, fives, and ones. There's a lot of areas with self service or minimal service, so exact change helps.
While setting up my tent to complete my claim, I noticed a yellow
piece of trash stuck to my car's grille. Oh wait, that's not trash.
After breakfasting on a PowerBar, I was ready for my first hike. The view from Fairyland Point (the parking area) was exceptional.
Heading down into the canyon on the Fairyland Loop trail took me past
hoodoo after hoodoo. By the end of the day it was really Too Many
Hoodoos. But there were a few interesting ones, such as this one
which had the appearance of having been blasted/melted by lightning.
There was the occasional Bronze Evening Primrose open by the trail.
I'm not sure why they have Evening in the name, given that all the
ones I saw were open in the morning. Each seemed to be by itself in a
clear spot in the sun. They stayed at least partly open until about
9:30.
I seem to like taking backlit photos. Perhaps because it means that
I'm stopped in the shadow.
The midpoint of the trail was supposed to be the Tower Arch... no,
wait the Tower Bridge. I was trying to figure out the distinction,
and what exactly a Tower Bridge would look like when I saw it. Oh,
that Tower Bridge.
Returning on the rim trail, there was an area where a number of nearby
hoodoos had windows on them. I scrambled out on this unofficial path
to get what turned out to be an uninteresting picture. In retrospect,
I probably shouldn't have done that. Although that slope is by no
means fatal, it's entirely loose rock, and it would have been tough to
get back up if I'd slipped down.
Another unofficial trail led up a loose slope to another window viewpoint. Coming back down, I felt something in my shoe. It felt like a sizable stone, but I hadn't felt it enter past my ankle, and it felt oddly smooth. I took off my shoe and dumped it out, but no stone. Putting my hand inside, I could feel a lump somewhere under the insole. That's when I finally noticed that the outer sole had peeled back, and a couple of stones had wedged into it. My shoe was still wearable, but it sure liked to ingest sand and stones from that point on. I made sure to wear my boots for all of the longer hikes after that.
Sharp-eyed readers will be able to pick out the trail that I took from
the canyon bottom to the rim.
Fairyland Loop + Rim Trail
Time: 8:00am - 11:50am
Distance: 8.0 miles
Ascent: 2309 feet
Water: 1.0 liters
