lifecycle: Days 16,17. 25 Miles from Hatch to Bryce Canyon NP. 50 Miles from Bryce NP to Escalante Outfitters (plus hike)

Yesterday... wow what a day. We packed up our wet tents after a morning frost and got on our jolly way highly anticipating a day of extended hiking at Bryce Canyon NP. Right at the junction of Highway 12 there was a tourist gift shop that offered free coffee to cure us from the chilly morning.. so of course we stopped and drank the guy out of his free coffee haha. He was great and told us about the bike path that we would then proceed to ride into Bryce. 15 miles on a bike path is much appreciated since we didn't have to watch for stray cars for once. We made it to Bryce by 1 PM. Got a site! Whoot! We learned from Zion that if we want to stay in the park we must get there early. We stayed in the North Campground which was absolutely perfectly laid out. It was arguably my favorite site (site, not amenities such as natural hot tubs, or surrounding attractions such as Pinecrest lake, or zion cliffs). After I did a round of my laundry we went on a hike... the fairyland loop. If you have not seen Bryce before, or pictures of it beware... you may not believe what you see in the pictures (which we all know cannot match seeing in real life). After 8 miles of hiking I was completely blown away by such intricate creation and ready to relax. Here are some pictures from the hike.......

The first Pinnacles we saw

What!!

A closer view

Seriously can a trail get any cooler? Where is my mountain bike!?

We then got up early to do a sunrise hike (Queens Garden Loop, and Navajo loop). This was definitely my favorite part of Bryce. The sun hit the pinnacles, hoodoos, or orange fingers, whatever you want to call them, and they seemed to glow! I could not believe the views we had, and the beauty of the lighting.

My favorite shot...

They seemed to glow in the morning

At sunrise point

A half-view shot of our site.

After our second hike in Bryce we left in quest of Capital Reef NP in two days unsure of where tonight might have been stayed. About 10 miles in we stopped in the fantastic town of Tropic. They had a great grocery store called Clark's Country General Store, where I loaded up on groceries for the next 4-5 days. As the day progressed our route turned from south to east and we finally got out of the headwinds and into some tails!!!! We rolled into Escalante around 4 PM with plenty of daylight left and 50 miles under our belts... not bad after hiking already in the morning. We had some tough climbs including the section called "the blues" which had 14 percent inclines, and then cruised with a strong tailwind into Escalante around a clip of 30 MPH.

Sidenote, this was our first tailwind in weeks it seems. No matter where we go the wind decides to follow us from the front haha. But we were incredibly thankful for the wind pushing us up some of the tough climbs.

We then watched our surroundings, as we were riding, while the skies turned black all around us. We kept dodging the major storms and only got hit by some of the tail ends of rain, but then we would see another storm forming. We decided it would be a good idea to stop in at Escalante Outfitters to ask about the radar, and camping places up the road. Turns out this would be the last stop we would make today.

WIthin 15 minutes of us stopping for a break we got dumped on by torrential rains... and soon after the next cloud brought hail along with it. Were so thankful that we stayed to hang out for a bit. Mimi, the owner, ended up telling us that we were going to stay for free in the campground behind the store, we really didn't have a choice haha. The store actually has a great cafe and restaurant connected to it as well so we are sitting there about to get a massive pizza! We decided it wasn't worth traveling 10 more miles today with the storm chances (we weren't going to go further because of a HUGEEE climb that we will save for tomorrow). So here we are, at a great outfitter, campground, cafe place with amazing people. God is blessing once again. There is rumor of there being a concert here tonight as well so we will see how that goes.