Adventure! Day 18 - Drive to Bryce Canyon
Another day of driving ahead of us. This time it should only be 4 or 5 hours, so not so long.
This morning was full of washing laundry, packing up bags and the bus, making another delicious breakfast and saying goodbye. We got a jam session in too while we waited on that one last load of laundry to dry. We gave some Tophouse covers a try.
We sleep in Bryce Canyon tonight and are planning to wake up super early to watch the sunrise. Tonight we will watch the sunset and hang out to see if we can see the penumbra of the earth and if we can spot our sister galaxy, Andromeda.
We are only there one night, but I think we will really enjoy this part of our adventure. We read the myth and lore of the hoodoos (and also the science of them). This part of the world has international dark sky status; if the weather is clear tonight, we should be able to see the Milky Way. And we drove past Butch Cassidy’s childhood home and found a podcast about him and learned a bunch.
Finishing Thursday on Friday morning: our rooms are fantastic. We arrived at a good time, having stopped to see petroglyphs at Fremont state park. It was a nice and easy hike, and for once they got it right - there was a hard section which was clearly marked and avoidable. I’ve never seen petroglyphs before; they were super cool. One more hour in and we arrived at Bryce Canyon. We walked the rim and watched the sunset from the sunrise watch point, then scouted out the sunset watch point for the sunrise in the morning. That’s what they suggested at check-in. We’ve been spoonerized.
We got up at 4 this morning to see the stars and then again at 6 to see the sunrise. I’ll write about the sunrise on day 19. In theory, I should talk about the stars on day 19 as well, but to me it feels like the night of the 18th -so here we are.
The stars were amazing. We woke up at 4 because the sky was overcast until 2 or so and we decided 4 would be good. It was cold and dark and beautiful. We saw the Milky Way, but not Andromeda. There were so many shooting stars and I think everyone saw at least one. It was cold and I wore my jacket. I have seen the night sky very dark with lots of stars, and as a child I would regularly see the Milky Way. But I’ve not ever seen so many stars as I saw this time. It was almost unreal. It took me a minute to get used to it; at first it seemed too cluttered up there to enjoy looking at it. The Milky Way looked like someone had scribbled, there were so many dots of light. We took some time to remember origin story of the milky way from mythology. We remembered a couple of different versions. Hera either volunteered to breastfeed Heracles or she was tricked into it- and he either bit her or she pushed him away in surprise- and her milk squirted out and formed the Milky Way. He went on to strangle snakes in his cradle so an auspicious beginning to an even more auspicious lifetime.
We got back in bed at 5 and some of us slept until the alarm at 6.
