Kanab, UT

After a short (3 hour) drive from Monument Valley, we arrived at Kanab. Another small town in Utah with the same naming convention for streets. The main roads are usually called Main Street and Center Street, the streets North of Center Street are 100 North, 200 North… The streets West of Main Street are 100 West, 200 West.. The street address of a location ends up with some permutation like S 100 E. I find it confusing but I’m sure it’s quite logical.

Kanab is not too far away from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and that’s what we decided to do – a day trip to the North Rim. The North Rim only sees about 10% of visitors to the Grand Canyon, mainly because it is remote and there is no close airport.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon

The North Rim is quite different from the South Rim, it is much greener (similar to our forests) and much cooler. Let’s just say we were a bit cold when we arrived in our shorts and t-shirts. It was around 52F / 11C. Since we’re Canadians, we just went about our business like it’s not really that cold. We went on the short and scenic Bright Angel Point trail, the view was quite phenomenal. It was at the Angel Point scenic overlook that Jeff got down on one knee…

Grand Canyon, North Rim

Overlook along Bright Angel Point trail

We did a couple more short hikes in the area. We hiked on the Kaibab Trail to the Cococino Overlook. All I can say is that when you’re hiking to the overlook, you’re not breathing the fresh clean air – you’re smelling mule poo and pee! This is a shared trail with the mules and their human customers who are likely too lazy to hike.

Cococino Overlook

Another day was spent at Bryce Canyon National Park. By now we have been to Arches and Canyonlands and we think we’ll see more of the same plus hoodoos at Bryce. I have to say that we were quite blown away by the landscape at Bryce. Seeing photos of the hoodoos is not quite the same as being there. Each time we came to a different stop we would go “wow”.

Bryce Point

Natural Bridge. Apparently it was named incorrectly, it should be an arch

We did a very enjoyable loop hike right into the canyons and hoodoos. The sign at the trailhead said that it would be a 340ft descent into the canyon and so down, down, down we went. The trail lead us through many different formations and we walked through a few tunnels and met a few chipmunks too. Eventually we had to work our way back to the rim from the floor of the canyon. I was hoping for an elevator at the other end, but nope.. The trail leading back up is called Wall Street because of the towering hoodoos – just like the skyscrapers on Wall Street. We were switching back and forth all the way up to the canyon rim. We enjoyed this part of the hike a lot because it was so different, but could tell many others were just struggling…

Up the trail called Wall Street, switch back after switch back. Saw lots of people huffing and puffing up

Wall Street, looking down at the switchbacks

We are off to Zion National Park for a short stay. We have been spoilt by the full RV hookups and having our showers. There is no shower facilities at the campground, just electricity. Well, at least we can stay cool..