Once we left Zion, we wanted to find a free campsite in between Zion and Bryce, so we quickly got out our phones and went searching. We came across one that seemed perfect, just 20 minutes outside of Bryce. As we were approaching the park, Heather wasn’t feeling that great, but we just dismissed it as if she had to go to the bathroom real bad. As we entered Dixie National Forest just before the park, there were some amazing views of hoodoos. There was a nice pullout to get out and take pictures; one thing that was nice though, is that there was a bathroom. Then we got back on the road and found our campsite. It was nice; perfect for our needs just a few cows that would be sharing the site with us. Heather wasn’t feeling good still. So we decided that we needed to find a real campsite that had bathrooms and that we could keep our stuff at so that we could have a nice relaxing day the next day. We entered the park and it said that one of the campgrounds still had space available. We were stoked!
The sunset was quickly approaching and we saw in our book that one of the things that we cannot miss is the sunset at sunset point. Obviously we had to go see the sunset and the colors the sun was making on the cliffs and hoodoos before making a choice of which campsite we would be calling home for the night. The sunset was beautiful and we walked around the rim for a little bit then hopped back in the car to find home. Once we got into the campground a park ranger said that he had just opened a site and that we should take it. We were like Right On! we will take that one then. We hadn’t paid for accommodation yet on the trip, so we were more than okay with paying to stay for a couple nights so that Heather could get well. The only catch about the site that we ended up going with is that it was an RV site and we would have to be out of the site by 11:30 the next morning. That was kind of a bummer but we just decided that it was ok because we were going to be waking up early for the sunrise and viewing it at sunrise point the next morning, early in the morning. Therefore we would have enough time to pick the most perfect campsite in the “tent camping” area because they are all first come first serve sites.
After watching a beautiful sunrise we returned to make breakfast and look for the most epic site ever. And of course we were able to find the most perfect site, there was room for a clothes line for drying all our clothes that we washed in the wash room of the bathrooms, a spot for the slackline, and even a spot for the hammock (which we took almost a four hour nap in that day). Bottom line, we truly enjoyed the campsite.
Fast forward 9 years, and we made it back with an updated professional camera. Check that new photo post out here.
During the day, we took the forty mile round trip to the end of the park and on the way back we stopped at all the pullouts to take pictures and admire God’s creation. When we got back we took our glorious nap in the hammock then was awoken by some crazy winds, a huge dark black cloud coming our way, and thunder in the distance. We quickly made dinner and ventured over to the canyon to watch the thunderstorm approach the canyon (little did we know, there would be four more thunderstorms in our forecast). Once we decided it was too close for comfort we ran back to the car and made our way back to the campsite to make a small fire from wood we found in other peoples campfire pits. While our whimpy fire glowed as we played I.R.S., a card game that is like slap jack crossed with war. We were having a little too much fun and making a lot of noise in our campground, so we could only fit in two games.
The next day we woke up with a nice breakfast and lounged around until we had to be out of the site at 11:30. We got to hiking the hoodoos around noon, so we thought. The past two days we were an hour early on everything and had no idea. We still are not sure how this happened. Anyways, we were hiking for a couple hours and sat down in the shade of a small cliff to have lunch. Along the way, there were little signs that said if we took a picture with at least three of them we get a little prize back at the visitor center, so we did. Haha. Only for kids, yeah right. Kids at heart.
After the hike we refilled all our water jugs and containers, then picked out the route to the next destination: Capitol Reef National Park.
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