It's days like these last few that remind me how great it is to be in a wonderful place meeting wonderful people. So far, every hike I have led included great people. Last week a young man named Bryce came with his parents. They were treating him to a National Parks vacation as a reward for getting his Masters degree at the U. of Virginia. He is now applying for medical schools, I hope he gets in and then I reminded him to take care of his parents in their old age. I think he will do both. I also had a MD who taught cardiology at the Wake Forest Medical School. His wife, was from Binghamton, but I didn't get to meet her unfortunately. Yesterday I had two couples from Hendersonville, NC, the one woman was from Binghamton. I also had the pleasure of hiking yestrday and today with Bob and Sharon from Kissimmee, Fla. They are educators and are taking the summer off. Sharon is an elementary counselor and Bob helps students improve their SAT and ACT scores. See http://www.maxthetest.com/ . This time they are touring the west without their kids. They had brought them the last time they were here when their kids were teenagers. Nothing against teenagers, but I think Bob and Sharon are enjoying their trip better this time. Bob or Sharon, if you see this and can amend anything I said please feel free with a comment.
Lsst week Kathy and I had a 'backcountry day' on our schedule instead of the usual day. So we spent Thursday and Friday hiking the Under-the-Rim trail again. We were able to do the 23 miles in two days this time because I went to our camp site the night before and cached water as well as our tent and thermarests. It made our packs much lighter for the trip. Brilliant! The only drawback was there were a few bugs here and there, but nothing like what we have experienced back east when bugs are at their worst. Bugs are a necessary part of the food chain though. We went up to our favorite point near Swamp Canyon on Thursday and made dinner and watched the wonderful evening settle on the serene backcountry from our perch. See image of the point.
Saturday night after a bike ride in light drizzle to nearby Red Canyon we saw a riveting slide show of the photography of camp host Charlie. Charlie set up a screen outdoors and ran the show from his laptop after dark. Seven of us volunteers watched it with him. He has taken aerial pictures from his ultralite of here at Bryce and surrounding areas as well as from Baja California. We want to go to Baja now! see http://charleschandlerphotography.com/
Sunday we took a drive down past the Tropic Reservoir to Crawford Pass in the Dixie National Forest. We hiked near the Pink Cliffs on the hiking trail there. We had the whole place to ourselves. We also spotted a forest fire that is being managed by the fire fighters here. On the way back there were lots of flames, a tree had probably ignited, they go up fast. A larger fire is raging to the west of here near Panguitch, it is now encompassing over 2600 acres and is threatening homes, so they are working at containing it. The most thrilling moment came when we were following a forest road in our truck that we thought would lead back into the park. I saw tire tracks so figured the road would have to lead to somewhere. Wrong, after going over a few miles (2 or 3?) of very rough road it came to an abrupt end next to a steep dropoff. There was no turnaround. I sort of went beserk, Kathy suggests my trail name should be Beserker, I also can get that way when I am fending off attacking bugs while hiking. Anyway, I had to back the truck up at a severe angle in a K-turn maneuver to get turned around. Kathy thought I was going to roll the truck, but good old Silver came through ok. We were glad to get back to saner roads and then I could feel saner. Lesson to self: don't take forest roads like that one anymore.
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