Detour

We awoke on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona knowing we had the time to take a leisurely drive to get to Bryce Canyon National Park. Over breakfast my wife and I contemplated which stop would be the better one to take on the way. One was an Indian village with artisans and adobe shops. The other was Navajo National Monument. We chose the latter hoping to have time for both. It was a good thing too because the little village was closed although we managed to whisk through it even though it seemed abandoned.

Navajo National Monument was a diamond in the rough. It preserves ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings. The site was surreal. Winding down a trail from the visitor center along the edge of a cliff, we marveled at the flowers on cacti, lizards darting across our path and the general beauty of this slow and refreshing walk. Then we peered out across the vast openness at a spectacular and utterly enormous hole gauged out of the face of an opposing cliff on the far side of the canyon.

It made me think I was looking through a telescope. The brown canyon face had sparse vegetation around, but inside was a sight like no other. Using binoculars and zoom camera lenses, we entered the interior of this far away visual. The scene inside resembled a grand display of what looked like miniatures. It seemed like a model village but it was real. It wasn’t a reconstruction. It was authentic. The structure dating back 700+ years was constructed primarily of sandstone blocks plastered together with mud and mortar. Just something about seeing from a distance, little mud houses comprising a village with glassless windows, stone ladders and no people seemed to disconnect in my mind. I kept reminding myself that it was the real deal. It just seemed so unreal. And maybe that was the magic of the vision.

The visitor center had educational and hands-on learning opportunities.  In addition to the self-guided tours, ranger-guided tours to the cliff dwellings may be scheduled by calling 928-672-2700.

Next stop, Bryce Canyon National Park.

Holiday Road Travel Series
by Frank R. Satullo

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UNIQUELY UTAH: PART II

Featuring Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon National Park Plus the Hopi Ruins at Navajo National Monument
in Arizona near the Utah border

Once we settled into our room after a very nice Detour, we decided to take an evening stroll along the rim of Bryce Canyon. The first thing we learned from a ranger is it isn’t a canyon. Go figure.

None-the-less, Bryce Canyon National Park was a sight to behold. The rock formations look like chess men lined up, row after row. My son said they made him think of totem poles only made of stone. In any case, Bryce has more Hoodoos than anywhere in the world.

What is a Hoodoo? Good question. Our ranger friend spent a great deal of time, knowing we were hanging on his every word, telling us the story of Hoodoos, the story of Bryce, the non-canyon. There is of course, the scientific Hoodoo explanation and that of mythology.

The science of the Hoodoo starts with pinnacle-like rock formations jutting high into the sky from the floors of arid drainage basins. The Hoodoo is soft sedimentary rock subject to erosion topped by a harder stone that better withstands the elements leaving top-heavy figures resembling columns of people. The tall wavy stones are highly concentrated down the cliff side as if walking to water. The massive amounts of these unique, varying and mystical shapes of rock formations throughout Bryce easily inspire the imagination.     

According to our favorite ranger, whom I do not remember his name, but did take the picture shown here of him talking to our family, the Paiute legend of the Hoodoos is as follows.

A powerful god named Coyote gave two brothers a sack to haul to the center of the Earth. They were warned not to open it. Temptation proved too much and they opened it and humans escaped. Coyote was angry and took the bag back and released the rest of the humans in the nearby lands. The natives of the area were called the Legend People which were actually animals that could transform into human shape and walk amongst the people. When they got close, they’d kill and eat them.  The people pleaded with Coyote to protect them from the Legend People. Coyote then told the Legend People that the humans had fled to what is now Bryce Canyon. When all the Legend People gathered in the canyon, Coyote unleashed his vengeance and turned them to stone where they stood, sat or slept.  The stone figures became known as Hoodoos. And when you visit today, it only takes a little imagination to see the Legend People as they were when Coyote turned them to stone.

After hearing such a legend told in such an enthusiastic way, and hopefully for the sake of history I remembered it correctly, we needed Hoodoo shirts to commemorate our visit to their lands. So the next morning, we made a Pit Stop outside the park to the “tourist trap” seeking anything Hoodoo.

When we returned back to our lodge room from our Pit Stop, we went on a mission to stand with the Hoodoos. To do so would mean hiking to the bottom of the “canyon.” A trip to the bottom meant proper provisions such as water, sun screen and the right shoes! Oh, and a map. It was interesting that different trails to the bottom were marked by level of difficulty. Later, we would discover an important lesson. Level of difficulty had nothing to do with level of danger. But at the time, we thought of the two as one in the same – our mistake.

There are no guard rails or safety features. It was you and the Hoodoos. Our family of four began a journey that would quickly stall and then abort. 

We were mere feet from the edge on hairpin trail turns that would send you into a death plunge with one misstep. Amazingly, my nerves were getting the best of me before even my ultra conservative wife. You see, she had the proper foot gear. So did our daughter. As for our son and me, we had bad soles on our hiking boots causing us to roll unexpectedly on the loose pebbles sparsely scattered on the hardened dirt and rock sloping down, down, down.

"WAIT A MINUTE,” I called out. Reluctantly, my wife slowed down and looked back as if I were “chicken.” Feeling emasculated, I pressed on.

"WAIT!” I demanded.

I stood staring at a section of trail ahead that was no wider than my outstretched arms and had a drop of at least 10-stories on both sides. We gathered under the little bit of shade provided by a lone straggly tree on the edge of the trail and contemplated our options while guzzling water. Our son finally said he was slipping too. That was enough to turn the girls around.

To this day I am puzzled and could never get a straight answer. If it weren’t for our son, would I be here to tell this story? And was that the plan? Hmmmmm. Maybe there was a sinister plot to turn me into a Hoodoo.

Relieved to be back in our lodge room, I sat and read while everyone else took a nap.

Later that afternoon we went to take another look at the Hoodoos. I couldn’t help but feel defeated. I really wanted to hike to the bottom. In conversation, I could tell my wife felt like it was a missed opportunity too. Then it happened.

We came to the top of a switch back trail going straight down, back and forth.

"But it says here that this trail is of the highest difficulty,” said my wife. “And we’re all in sandals and have no water!"

Ahh-HA! I was the one wearing the pants in this family once again and I was not about to give them up!

"Oh, no worries, if it gets too difficult we can turn around just like before,” I said.

She really must have wanted this quest because she walked by me and down we wound. It was really an optical illusion. If we had fallen off the edge, we’d probably keep on rolling straight down to the bottom bouncing off the trail below from time to time on the way down instead of stopping on the first switchback trail below.  When this dawned on my wife, she looked up, then down, and started to say, “Maybe …” so I walked past her at a brisk pace as if I didn’t hear her.

We befriended another couple from our home state during our long descent. They were having second thoughts too. But camaraderie took hold, jovial personalities meshed and before we knew it, we were halfway. After a brief look up and then down, we silently passed the point of no return. We were bottom-bound and everyone knew it. The cooler evening air didn’t dehydrate us like the midday heat so thirst was something in the back of our minds, not top-of-mind.

We started to laugh about how backward this was. We planned and prepared the best we could for the midday hike and had to quit. Now, on a whim, we were well on our way to the foot of the Hoodoos wearing sandals and carrying no water. We were certainly not poster children for park safety.

At last, we hit bottom and stood before the strangest thing – a tree trunk busting through the rock floor snaking up between two Hoodoos like a giant winding serpent seeking to get to the top as much as we were seeking the bottom. And when it reached the heads of the Hoodoos, it burst into a green ball of life (See pictures below).

Our couples-friend expressed that’s enough for them and decided to rest and then retreat. We contemplated that thought for a moment before saying our goodbyes and disappearing into a very different Bryce Canyon National Park than what we saw from an aerial view.

We wandered around, amazed at the beauty and 360 degrees of natural surroundings, without another person in sight. It was as if we were the only people left on Earth. There were green bushes and trees, albeit few and far between, but they highlighted the landscape as we walked trail after trail looking up at the Hoodoos instead of down. When daylight seemed soon to vanish, we decided we didn’t like the earthen landscape enough to sleep there so we backtracked until we found our trail out.

After a long, treacherous ascent with exhausted kids complaining every 3.2 minutes, we reached the lodge at nightfall and sat in rockers gulping bottled water with the utter sense of accomplishment spread across our faces. The glow was powerful enough to attract our couples-friend from across the way in the dark. They sat and talked for a while as we reminisced about our unlikely adventure.

That night, we hit our pillows with no energy to spare. We were spent.  

Utah
Attractions
Worth Consideration

Arches National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park

Canyonlands National Park

Capitol Reef National Park

Glen Canyon National Recreational Area

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Natural Bridges National Monument

Rainbow Bridge National Monument

Salt Lake City

Zion National Park

Pit Stop

You would think that someone would have capitalized on the marvel idea of Hoodoos. Outside of Bryce was a cluster of small and large shops, restaurants and such. It was the only place for miles to get food, shop or see anything commercial. It was the perfect place, so we thought, to get Hoodoo gear. The Hoodoo selection was just a touch on the outside of non-existent. There may have been a mug or something but even those seemed to miss the point.

We wanted Hoodoos in a bag to take home, no pun intended.

We combed each store two or three times and still nothing. We asked clerks and they couldn’t help us. Was somebody missing a golden opportunity here? I felt like starting a roadside T-shirt stand on the spot. In fact, when we got home, I had custom T-shirts made up using our hoodoo photos and paid less per shirt than I was willing to pay in Utah.

After we realized we’d leave empty-handed, I pulled in for a fill-up. It was one of those places that forced you inside rather than pay-at-the-pump. As I walked around the back bumper of our vehicle to go inside, I noticed two young ladies that rolled up to the pump behind ours. The image stuck in my head because they rolled up in one of the biggest RVs I had ever seen, old as it was. But I did not want to stare.

When I stood at the counter inside, there was a delay with the person in front of me so my eyes wandered around and then out of the corner something caught my attention. I call this one of those Chevy Chase moments from the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation. If you grew up in the 1980s as I did, it’s difficult not to see similarities to the movie while traveling across the United States on a family vacation.

Anyway, what caught my eye was one of the two ladies that pulled in with the RV. I don’t know what she was standing on but she was elevated enough to get the upper half of her body hanging over the front of the RV while she stretched across the giant windows with a squeegee cleaning them. Maybe it was because we’d been on the road for almost two weeks, maybe it was the heat, fatigue, her scantily clad attire, I don’t know. But this young platinum blonde in perfect shape looked like she stepped right out of the Swiss Alps with a tan. The unlikely sight went into slow motion in my mind only to be interrupted by the “other woman” walking straight toward me with eyes of disgust. Those looks killed so I sheepishly turned toward the store clerk who was waiting for my attention and money. Embarrassed, I walked with my head down all the way back to my vehicle and promptly told my wife what happened. She laughed and called me an idiot I think.

Now, it was lunchtime. Conscious of our expensive lodge room in the park, I did not want to spend a fortune for lunch. I remembered a Subway restaurant several miles away. I tossed that around with the other option – restaurants at the “tourist trap.” Then my daughter or son or someone, maybe it was a voice in my head, said “EAT FRESH!.” So we did.

I half expected this Subway restaurant to have “tourist prices” so it was a pleasant surprise that it didn’t. That surprise was eclipsed by another. We filled the empty cups they gave us at the counter at the fountain machines far on the other side of the dining area. Utah, we have a problem. The bottoms of all four cups leaked. So we had a mess. Sticky cola dripping all over hands, down arms, onto the table and puddling on the floor.

Now, we were “those people."

When I went back to the counter and shared my experience asking for more cups I got strange looks from not only the Subway workers but the people in line.

Armed with new cups, problem solved, or so we thought. Round two produced the exact same results so I was back at the counter with a little attitude to match that of the workers and people peering down their noses standing in line obviously hungry and irritated by me.

Vindication!

The family that followed us to the fountain drinks had the same problem.

HA!

I was sticky but happy.

Even after the Subway team opened a new sleeve of empty cups and passed them out, we noticed they too leaked albeit much slower. Slow enough to keep us seated long enough to inhale our fresh food and leave a table coated in a coke and sprite glaze, or was it Sierra Mist?

Whatever. We were fueled and ready to go stand with the Hoodoos back at Bryce Canyon.