Deer Springs Road

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  Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Thursday, August 19, 2010

Aah, we had a much better day at the Grand Canyon today. Sharon was up at daybreak and was greeted by a gorgeous sunrise and an elk munching on the lawn of the El Tovar Hotel as she went to get coffee. We also did some hiking on the Bright Angel Trail, which is the main trail at the Grand Canyon Village. It leads down to the canyon floor and is busy with hikers and pack mule trains. It also smells like mule dung. Many people will hike down halfway and camp for the night, then continue on to the floor. We were sharing the trail with some hardcore hikers who had spent multiple days in the canyon. Of course, the Peffers only ventured about 30 minutes down the trail and came back up. It's the "coming back" part that's the killer.

As often seems to happen with the Peffers, a surreal moment occurrred while on the trail. We rounded a bend and encountered our friends from Richmond, the Sanderson family. Sharon went to graduate school with Selena. They just had lunch a couple of weeks ago and somehow managed to run into each other at the Grand Canyon hiking the Bright Angel Trail. We were also able to get away from the crowds by renting bikes and biking on a part of the rim road that is only open to hikers and bicyclists. That provided much better views of the canyon without crowds, and was a highlight of our visit for the kids.

As I write this now, we are heading back into Utah to visit Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks. Unfortunately it is 9 pm now and the GPS has put us on a rutted dirt road that runs through the wilds of Utah for 35 miles, and we can only drive 25 miles per hour. I'm a little worried about Big Red making it, and also how Big Red will look if we make it through the road to our motel!

Edited to add: It's now 1130 and we just got to the motel in Cannonville UT. The curious thing is that the motel also functions as a country store. We traveled 10 miles on that rutted road (Deer Springs Road) and had to turn around due to it being washed out. We then had to travel 15 miles on another rutted road and go about 35 miles out of the way to get here.

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Another canyon shot during the bike ride.   Comments!	Bike ride along the rim!	Control your kids part 2.	Hiker over-exertion is a problem.   Comments!
Peffer and Sanderson rendevouz.	Sunrise.   Comments!

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