Hoodoo you love?

Day 23 – Bryce Canyon National Park, UT

Some of the many hoodoos at Bryce Canyon National Park.

Today’s title is interactive.  Go back and sing the title, George Thorogood style.  If you don’t know what that is, just shout it in a really gravelly voice, tone and notes are not important.  If you still aren’t sure, check it out on iTunes or watch a Sam Adams beer commercial.  Ok, now that we got that out of the way, we can talk about what the heck a hoodoo is and what it had to do with our day.

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And that’s where I stopped typing last night.  Amy put a show called “Perception" on and I laid down to watch the ending and the next thing I knew, it was 2 in the morning, the TV was still on, and there was no way I was getting back up to finish writing.   So now we are sitting at our friendly St. George Ford/Lincoln/Mercury dealer, hoping that they have good news for us and we can get on to Zion and the rest of our day.  More on that later.  But back to yesterday…

We woke up in the hotel and it was awesome.  Big comfortable bed, perfect temperature.  No dust, or moisture, or loud neighbors.  The bathroom was clean and just steps away.  We got ready and headed down for a wonderful hot breakfast.  Why didn’t we do this the whole time???

After our breakfast, we hopped in the car to head for Bryce Canyon National Park, which is about two hours from where we are staying.  There are actually three different ways to get there, all of them about the same distance.  I decided to take us on the middle route which would go past Cedar Breaks National Monument.  I do not know what Cedar Breaks National Monument is, but I thought that it would be neat to drive past.  What I didn’t know is that there was a landslide on US-14 (the road we needed to take) and that it was now closed.  In fact, I didn’t know it until we got to the signs blocking the road.  Thanks, Utah DOT.  So we had to turn around and take the northern route that included some of the drive we did yesterday, just in reverse.

Hiking amongst the hoodoos on the Fairyland Loop trail.

We got to the park, checked out the visitor center, and headed to the trailhead for our first hike.  The hike we took was called the Fairyland Trail, which is an 8-mile loop that descends from the rim of Bryce Canyon into the valley below.  We also decided to include the short Tower Bridge spur into our hike, adding another .5 miles.  The canyon itself is named for Ebenezer and Mary Bryce, two early Mormon settlers in the canyon.

As we approached the rim for our hike, we saw Bryce’s most iconic features: its hoodoos.  So in our ever continuing series of southwestern geology lessons, today we learned what a hoodoo is.  The word hoodoo actually has three meanings.  It can be a noun, somewhat synonymous with voodoo, meaning a type of witchcraft or spell.  It can be used as an adjective to describe a practitioner of the black arts.  Finally, it can be used as a noun to describe pillars of multicolored sedimentary rock created over time through various eroding forces.  The pillars have soft rock on the bottom that erodes faster than the hard rock on top creating a spire, tower, or pyramid formation.  Another name for these formations is “fairy chimneys”.  We, obviously, saw the rock hoodoos, although there is definitely something magical about them, so you can see how they got the name.

A 360(ish) view from inside Fairyland.

The rim of the canyon basically runs north/south, and we began our hike towards the northern end of the canyon.  The first part of the hike, which took us 2.5 miles south along the rim of the canyon, alternated between stunning views of the hoodoos in the basin below and nothing views of sparse forest on the rim above.  It’s incredible how different two views 10 feet apart can be. 

Up close with the hoodoos.

After this first section of the hike, we got to the point where we would begin our descent into the basin below.  This path wound its way down and around all shapes and sizes of rock formations.  Some were rounded, some jagged, some tall and alone, some clumped together.  The colors, which from up above seemed a smooth blend of white, orange, salmon, pink, and red were now distinct and varied from one set to the next.  In the taller spires, the layers became even more visible and quite a magnificent site.

Tower Bridge, far left.

We would our way down and made it to the spur for Tower Bridge.  As we learned yesterday, a bridge is a rock wall that is eroded on two sides by a running stream.  This was actually eroded by frost and precipitation, making it an arch, not a bridge.  But the bridge imagery seemed much more appropriate.  Looking at it, it almost seemed like something one would see standing regally over a river in London.  Also at this time, the clouds, which had been thick up to this point, started to break up and we had some blue sky and sun shine which seemed to wake up the colors in the rocks even more.

We continued on with the hike which continued to go up and down through the basin as we wound our way around the various hoodoos.  Amy pointed out how appropriate the name “Fairyland” is for this area; it doesn’t even seem real.  I almost expected to be able to go up to the rocks, knock on them, and feel plastic, like the fake rocks you would see at Disneyworld or Noah’s Ark.  It had the feel of a movie set, a real world Mordor (Lord of the Rings) or Tatoonie (Star Wars).

"Mordor" with the clouds rolling in.

More clouds rolled in and the sky started to spit at us a little, but luckily nothing to heavy hit us.  The final descent was tough, but overall, this was probably our easiest long hike of the trip.

We got back in the car and started to make our way south along the park road.  Our first stop was at the Bryce Point overlook.  Here, we got our first view of the Bryce Amphitheatre, which is a giant basin completely filled with hoodoos.  The site was breathtaking.  The colors were amazing and the size, scope, and intricacy of the spires were mind-blowing.  The same was true for our next stop, which was Inspiration Point (if you are keeping track, our 3^rd Inspiration Point of the trip).

Bryce Amphitheatre from Inspiration Point.

Bryce Amphitheatre

The native story says that this used to be the land of the Legend People.  The Legend People were bad, so Coyote turned them to rock.  Some were standing.  Some were sitting alone.  Some were huddled together.  That story added an interesting perspective as we gazed over the thousands of spires below us.  As we are hiking through all of these incredible places, you can’t help but start to think about where, and how, and why this all came about.  But sometimes, it’s better to just stop thinking and enjoy.

Natural Bridge

As we left Inspiration Point, two bad things happened.  One, the rain picked up.  Two, the car’s steering column started shaking badly.  We still had a few more overlooks we wanted to get to and one last hike at the south end of the canyon we wanted to do.  But with the weather and car situations, we just stopped at one last overlook (Natural Bridge – also not a bridge, but an arch) and headed back to St. George.  We stopped to fill up n gas in the small town just outside of the park.  Seeing they had an express oil change place, and being close to needing one, we decided to quickly get that done while we had time.  They got it done in no time, but as we started to pull out – boom - no power steering.  I wrestled the car back to the garage (luckily we weren’t out of the parking lot yet) and had the guys take a look at it.

I thought that maybe, somewhere along the way, we had done something to puncture our power steering fluid reservoir.  The guys looked all over for it but could not find it.  They looked our car up online and found that it has electronic power steering, so there is no reservoir or fluid.  The guys were great and very helpful, so I don’t want to say anything bad about them, but electronic power steering was, well, out of their comfort zone, let’s say.  Luckily when we turned the car back on, the power steering came back as well.  The shakes and rattles were still there, but at least we could drive.

We immediately called a Mercury dealership close to our hotel and they told us to bring it in first thing in the morning.  The rest of the ride back was nice and the car did well.  We took the southern route back as it was the shortest distance and stayed off the interstate.  This took us through our next destination, Zion National Park, so we stopped at the visitor center to plan everything out for today.  Hopefully we can get to it.

We got back to the hotel, ordered some pizza, and settled in for the night.  On a trip this long, we were bound to hit some bumps.  Hopefully, these bumps aren’t too big.