Despite Nicole’s Hilton Honors Diamond status, the Tapestry collection near Zion has decided to start serving breakfast at 8am. For a place where many people likely get up early to beat the heat, watch a sunrise, or just generally maximize their day in a national park, it seems like a conscious decision to avoid serving breakfast to 80% of the hotel guests. We were given about $30 of credits we could use at the small market store and we stocked up on 4 bags of chips, 2 Reese’s, some cookies, an iced tea, a selzer, a bowl of instant oatmeal, and several Kind granola bars. Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple, are not to leave empty handed.
We had a little over an hour’s drive to reach the Kane County Visitor’s Center and had to get there by 830am. Our route actually took us through Zion, which is currently open to normal vehicle traffic. As summer approaches, a reservation system and mandatory tram will be in place. We pulled up to the center in Kanab with about ten minutes to spare. We were issued our permits (a word that everyone there kept pronouncing very bizarrely) and given maps and other information as part of a briefing. There were only about ten people in the visitor’s center, and while permits are also given out at a visitor’s center in Page, Arizona, perhaps the lack of people is promising for enjoying the “Wave” in solitude tomorrow.
We attempted in vain to check in to the Springhill Suites in Kanab. As it was about 9am, they were having none of it. We asked if we could at least have some breakfast and they said we’d have to pay. Come now. It’s a breakfast at a Springhill Suites. It is too terrible to be given a monetary value. We picked up some muffins, bananas, and a loaf of bread at nearby Honey’s supermarket to act as our breakfast. We ate it in the breakfast room of the Springhill to spite the lady at the front desk. Feeling that our room would probably not be ready for some time, we got back in the car and headed to Bryce Canyon.
It was about an hour and a half drive from Kanab. We bought a day pass and parked at the first overlook called Sunset Point. We were obviously not there at sunset, but it was still nice to see. It overlooks an area of the park known as the amphitheater. We walked a bit around the rim to another overlook called Inspiration Point, which was incidentally not as inspiring as where we had been. Many of the trails and other roads in the park are closed this time of year, so the amphitheater and surrounding areas are pretty much all you can access. I was hoping for some snow canvassing the hoodoos (the towering rock formations), but it has simply been too warm this year.
We had one more stop on our way out of the park at a place called Mossy Cave. It was a short hike up to a grotto where water had formed into thick icicles to remind everyone that it is in fact winter despite the lack of visible snow. When exposed to the wind, it is quite chilly. At over 8000 ft elevation, Bryce is significantly cooler feeling than Kanab and we were glad to have brought our hats and gloves.
As we drove back toward the Springhill Suites, we made a stop about 25 minutes outside of town at a place called the Belly of the Dragon. It is a man-made tunnel dug to divert water under the nearby hwy to avoid flooding it during the summer rains. However, over time, the rushing water carved out its own “ribs” through natural erosion as it charged through the tunnel creating the appearance being inside the belly of a dragon.
I thought it was like that scene in Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo is being real sassy, and C-3PO is being really extra because they’ve chosen to hide the Millennium Falcon inside an asteroid which is actually the stomach of a big ol’ space slug. Anyway, worth a quick stop if you find yourself near the booming metropolis of Kanab, Utah. We had dinner at Escobar’s, an unassuming Mexican restaurant and one of about five restaurants open in Kanab. It was understandably quite popular. One of the servers teased an elderly woman patron by saying, “I thought you come twice a week, not twice a day!” Pickings are slim in Kanab.
For our final acts of the day, we purchased some more beverages at Honey’s supermarket and topped off on gas in preparation for our big adventure to the “wave” tomorrow.
passports & pepto bismol 