Leigh's Excellent European Adventure: Hills, Page Wrap-up, Escalante, Bryce Canyon, Red Canyon, Kodachrome Basin

Man are we both still pissed off today. To top it all off the “easy” drive from Escalante to Salina turned out to be a saga of many, many hills.

137 miles took us 4.5 hours – crazy stuff. Anyway we’re here now at “Butch Cassidy Campground” which is pretty nice actually. There are cool old arcade machines in the laundry, including Joust!

Page Day 2
As you may or may not remember I’d had several Mojitos (Smirnoff this time) the night before, so was feeling quite seedy. We’d decided to try and do some stuff that was close to the campground, due to the Jeep’s flaky power steering.

First up, we cruised down to the Glen Canyon Dam. It’s only 16 feet shorter than the Hoover dam, and I suppose is quite interesting.

Unfortunately you can’t go ON the dam without signing up for a tour, and we’d just missed one – time to head over the road to a little trailhead and head off to the Hanging Gardens, whatever they were.

Let me assure you, it was freaking hot. I’d decided to leave my 20kg of camera equipment at home, so was bounding through the rocky vista with ease (all right, I was sweating and puffing and cursing Senor Mojito if you must know).

Here I am looking very majestic.

It was quite a short walk to the hanging gardens. Oddly, they were plants hanging on the wall of a rocky outcrop. It was super cool and moist in there, and a refreshing change from the moisture sapping landscape.

You could see the river from the hanging gardens, and in a bold move we decided to hike off trail to the river to have lunch!

It didn’t take us too long to hike through the rocky landscape. You can see very distinctly all the layers in the rock…

…and the erosion leaves weird shapes to behold.

It was great to arrive, and take a seat by the cool river.

Kat freaked out when a wave from the wake of a boat washed over her legs, and made me move to higher ground. We had some lunch, and took in the sights.

Did I mention the heat already? The walk back was... hot, so we headed back to the dam visitor centre and signed up for a tour (and hung around in the air conditioning).

Typically, the elevators were being serviced, so we didn't get to go into the bowels of the dam and see the electricity generation, but we did get to walk on the top of the dam (accompanied by guide and eagle-eyed security dude).

To get there you had to go through this corridor with the WICKEDEST acoustics ever.

The dam itself was ok. One interesting thing of note is that there is a patch of grass at the bottom, instead of just dirt - allegedly because the first lady of the time suggested they plant flowers, and the dam operators settled for grass.

Random Image: Dinosaur Tracks. How cool is that.

That night we made jambalaya. Not as good as my first effort, I blame the American Bacon.

Page Day 3
We got up quite early and headed out to shoot Horseshoe Bend.

We waited around for AGES for the sun to climb higher. Should have waited more, but I was hungry for breakfast. A nature photographer I am not yet.

By the way, yes the above image is a composite, and yes it is a little orange. I haven't got it quite right yet. Go away.

The power steering pump was making ominous noises on the way back home, so I thought it was a good opportunity to change it out.

Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, if you don't have the right tools (even though I thought I did) the job will take you longer than you imagine. To cut the long (and sweaty) story short, I had to jump on the bike (again) with my power steering pumps in hand to get a mechanic to remove the pulley from the old one - because the tool we bought BENT under the strain. Grr.

Thankfully it only cost $20, less than the tool I returned. Win.

I was pooped after all this, so we didn't go anywhere, cep't the supermarchet for another $15 bottle of Mojito. Oooh.

We spent the evening shooting the breeze with our neighbours Booker and Claire.

Hilariously, Kat got spastic, and on our return to the RV she had several very chunky spews. This is how she looked the next day.....

Man did I laugh. A lot. I'm still laughing to be honest. ROFL.

Page to Escalante
Aside from being bumpy as all hell, it was an uneventful journey. We arrived, checked out the visitor centre, and I queued the last remaining two Battlestar Galactica episodes. Yessss!!

Escalante – Dry Flat
There’s a whole bunch of shit around Escalante – within 100 miles there is Bryce Canyon, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Capitol Reef, Red Canyon, Kodachome Basin, Zion National Park, and the list goes on. Sadly there is no way known to see all of this in three days.

Given we’d been too tight to pay $50 to go see Antelope Canyon [insert link] we decided to check out the slot canyons that are near Escalante.

About 50 miles down the most rutted dirt road you can imagine, we arrived. I thought the Jeep was going to shake apart, but…. it did not.

At Dry Flats there are several canyons, I have no idea which ones we went inside, but hey, have some pictures of them.

As you can see, they are quite narrow, with amazing shapes and colours. I don’t know whether this shape was made by man or nature.

The light and colours are great.

There are surprisingly heaps of lizards and spiders and such living on the canyon walls.

While not as cool as Antelope Canyon we still had fun.

We had to do a bit of rock climbing to get into the last canyon. But I think it was worth it.

It was stinking hot again, so we headed back to the Turd. On the way back I managed to misplace the cap from the power steering pump so fluid went everywhere. Waah. I couldn’t find the stinking thing, so we rang NAPA in a nearby town (60 miles away) and ordered some parts.

Given we were heading out there, we thought we’d stay closer to Bryce/Red Canyons and Kodachrome Basin, so we booked a night in a cheap motel….

Bryce Canyon
We arose early, and headed out in the Jeep. All went well, and we arrived at the parts store within the hour, and were at Bryce Canyon by 1030.

Bryce Canyon was full of fat people.

We hiked down what must be the most boring trail in the whole park, so returned to the top a bit disillusioned.

We checked into our hotel, watched some teev, and headed out for dinner. All together a bit of a bleh day.

Bryce Canyon Take 2
Despite having grand plans to get up at 0530 and shoot Bryce Canyon Amphitheatre in the dawn light, we slept in until 0700. Oooh late morning. We checked out, headed down, and I banged out a couple of panoramas.

I'd love to upload them, but... I can't.

I was a bit over it, so we headed out to Red Canyon…..

Red Canyon
Red Canyon was really cool. We walked around for a couple of hours admiring the weird shapes that reminded us things.

For instance…. two people standing back to back, and another facing away from them.

A weird formation that kind of looks like some kind of skull baby.

The head of a Viking. Or Zeus.

A dragon.

A dog sitting on a cliff.

Finally, a bird sitting on a hippo who is sitting on a whale.

The landscape is cool.

Kodachrome Basin
Moving along, we started back towards the Turd. On the way was the worlds busiest Subway, and the Kodachrome Basin. So named by the 1949 National Geographic expedition that photographed it.

Continuing the strange rock formations, we saw what looked like an elephant….