May 12th, 2019 / (0km/0mi)
As planned, today is a hiking and sightseeing day in Bryce Canyon. I couldn’t just cycle past it and since yesterday was an exhausting bike day anyways, the timing of Bryce Canyon popping up along UT-12 couldn’t have been any better.
I’m rather late this morning, so only get into the park with the free shuttle at around 10am. I decide to hike down into the canyon from Bryce Point and walk over to Sunride Point, which is supposedly a short 9km trail. All easy today.
The trail itself is beautiful. While at the rim of the canyon – no matter which scenic point you choose – you’ll get the breathtaking panorama of the whole Bryce Canyon and with clear sight you can almost see Grand Canyon in the distance. It’s really a fascinating view. But when you walk down a trail into the canyon itself, every turn offers new perspectives of the red glowing stone towering all around. It’s really worth spending some time down here and just walk around and have the scenery leave an impression on you. It’s really pretty. And has lots of people on the trails. It’s Sunday today, but I guess it’s no different on any other weekday.
I take way too many pictures of stones today. And yes, I did it: a picture of a squirrel. Sigh. I had to.
The rest of the afternoon I spend on washing some clothing (not for the looks, but for the smell), post-process way too many pictures I’ve taken, update my social sites and this blog.
And after dinner I want to change the tire of my back wheel. I think I’m loosing some air over the course of a day and when I took a closer look, the tire has been showing some wear, even abrasion on one side. I guess I damaged it with my harsh breaking on the gravel next to the road’s shoulder, when I had that crash. Perhaps the tube got some small puncture, too. And I rather change it while in a motel room than when trying to get from A to B on the road. Planned maintenance work. Sigh.
Tomorrow I’ll go until Torres. Original plan was to have a stop at Escalante. But I will combine two legs into one and speed up a bit. That’ll compensate for the involuntary rest day in Cedar City and the voluntary sightseeing day today and get me back to the original time plan. Also, the two upcoming legs are rather short. Combining them will get me to 143km, but elevation gain is half of that yesterday, so I’m confident it’ll work fine. But I’ll start early while there’s little traffic and less heat of the day yet.