Bryce Canyon National Park, we arrived!

It was supposed to be a short day with only 250 miles to cover, but it took time.  For starters, the trucker next to us last night was using a  noisy  generator and he parked so that it blasted right into our bedroom on the motorhome.  The generator was a old fashioned type, constant speed and it groaned a bit each time the air conditioner  (or heat pump) kicked in.   So we were up at 5:00 AM, and left the rest area by 6:15 AM, skipping breakfast until later.

We drove about 50 miles to a large truck stop (and very clean) in Green River, UT, where we fueled up the thirsty beast and also fed ourselves breakfast.

Upon leaving the truck stop, it was on down the very good interstate surface wise.   I didn't keep track of how many times we left the top of the plateau and crossed the valley to do it again the next one over.  However, the motorhome CAT engine did a respectable job going up the hills and holding us back going down the hills.

The thing I remember from 50 years ago when Sandy and I traveled the area was that most of the highways were along the rivers, very few hills to climb.  And so it was that when we left the interstate and headed south on state highway 89, the road was almost all in the valley until we reached Bryce Canyon National Park.  The developed park area is on the plateau and tomorrow we get to look at the spires growing out of the valley floor.

We really haven't been keeping track of time and when we arrived, I decided that we were either a day late or two days early to avoid the check in crowd. 

At least,  my assumption is the normal run of tourist in the park plus the extra  weekenders, makes for a much larger check in crowd on Friday.  Also, the sites in this park are the same small sites that they laid out when vacationers traveled in a 16 to 18 foot tow-behinds or used a tent 50 years ago, so people have a hard time deciding which one will work for them.  But we found a site and squeezed in.  (The Honda is parked else-where.)

Hopefully by tomorrow we'll have adapted well enough to the higher altitude so that we can do some walking in the park.  (I think the plateau elevation is in the mid 8K range.)

One downer for us is that the campgrounds are in the trees.  Thus my solar system isn't going  to do much.  But that is why we also carry a generator.

Gene