National Parks V

I have three national parks to do today. They are Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion. Capitol Reef should look at a name change perhaps. It's a good park, but not well known and has a confusing name. The words "Capitol" nor "Reef" seem to make sense.

However, Capitol Reef is a nice park. Along one trail I got to go through an arch, which was one more than I got to go through in Arches National Park. Did not see a single reef, though. These three seem somewhat close together on a map, but still a lot of driving. I guess it's all relative. I thought I would spent a lot of the trip on mountainous roads behind big old slow campers, but I haven't. I think the really hot weather and the monsoons every day makes this kind of the off season. The only real crowded park is Zion later today.

 Bryce Canyon was in the midst of the daily monsoon. I had places to go, so I waited it out in the gift shop for awhile, but then I decided to go for it. I got really really drenched. Eventually it let up, there was about 20 minutes of hard rain. The scenery was great, but instead I'm including a picture of the muddy trail I was on. This marks the point where I gave up and turned around. The rain had stopped, but the trail was pretty much impassable. And I didn't want to slide down the cliff. They actual canyon has (I think they're called) hoodoos. They are orange spires that stick out of the ground. Without the rain, I'm assuming this is probably as crowded as Zion. It's a nice park with lots of camping. I thought about tent camping. I brought one with me, but the rain made that a bad idea. Also, I thought I would get eaten by a bear. Turns out I've spent around $50 or less every night except for one where I had to go $80. All except one were nice. At least nice enough for my taste. Certainly better than a tent.

I started today by stopping at a store that was built into a giant rock. I am serious. You go inside and its all inside a giant rock. Later I saw a tunnel and I thought, "Wow, again. Here is a tunnel going through a mountain." Then I realize all tunnels do that. Its kind of the definition of a tunnel. But the store really was cool. It also had a dinosaur out in front of the store. (I don't know why.)

Zion just has weird rock formations. It's hard to describe, but I certainly see why it is popular. Kind of like being on another planet. I went up a trail that went to the top of a mountain. I went quite a ways, until I chickened out and came back. I don't mind getting tired, but I'm not crazy about heights.

Let me combine this day with the last day of my trip. It had Great Basin National Park. No offense, but I'm not sure how this got to be a national park. I didn't go through all of it, but the part I saw was rather ordinary. It's in Eastern Nevada and maybe by the desolation around it, it looked pretty good. I wouldn't make a big detour to get here, but if you come by it, you might as well go in. I just went to Trip Advisor to look up what other people said. A lot of comments like, "We basically had the park to ourselves." No kidding. I guess there are some cool caves in a section I wasn't in, so I'm maybe not the best source for this park.

Anyway this ends my national park adventure. Six days, ten national parks, a lot of rain, a lot of trails and trials, but also a lot of fun.