Saturday, October 25, 2008

Under the Rim

Mrs. Drake and I finally got out for a trip together. Her schedule was changing and I was studying hard for the math test to teach high school math. That meant we only had one day to hike, so we decided to go to Bryce Canyon National Park. I think it is funny that Bryce is called Bryce Canyon when it is not a canyon at all. It should be Bryce Plateau National Park. Well, on this day, Jacqueline and I dropped off the Plateau to do the Under the Rim Trail. We were going to do an eleven mile section that ended at Rainbow Point. The plan was to go there and come back. The trail was excellent, being well-maintained and wide enough for the two of us to fit side by side in places. There were beautiful views and lots of miles to keep us going. It was great to see the Natural Bridge from below. I never realized Bryce had so many miles of trails and the great part about it was, no one was there. For the entire eleven mile trip on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, we saw no one. We had the whole place to ourselves to enjoy the hike. When it got to be time to start thinking about whether we were going to turn around, Jacqueline and I made a deal. I would let her bail on the roundtrip if she did the asking for the ride. She agreed, but when we had finished the trip, I had to get her going on the asking. I did not want to be there all day. Finally, it worked out that a couple would give us a ride. The only issue was that they would stop at all the viewpoints along the way. There are a ton of viewpoints in Bryce, so we had to keep getting out of the car and then getting back in before finally they realized just how far away we were and just finished it out giving us a ride to my truck. They were very nice about it, though, and we were happy to get that ride. The day’s hike just made me want to get back to Bryce and do the rest of the trip on the Under the Rim Trail.

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