Flying solo once more

9/13:

Well, back to being solo! It's just me and Jane now. Sad to see my parents go as they are excellent company but it is nice to no longer have a schedule again. I know that I'd like to go to Monument Valley before I end the trip, and I know that I have to get home by September 18th, and that's about as much as I've got set up for now! The rest of my trip I am just going to wing, as it's one of the last chances I'll have for a while to truly do whatever I want.

Instead of planning out the rest of my trip like a responsible adult, I started the day with a hike of the Fairyland Trail, a nice long 9-miler right near the lodge. The views were amazing and the hike was very pleasant. The hoodoos of Bryce Canyon are seriously cool, both aesthetically and geologically speaking.

These hoodoos look like snail shells!

A far-off collection of hoodoos that looks like a castle, as seen through a hole in the rocks

At the end of my hike I passed a couple who recognized me from Arches. We stopped and chatted for a while as they were running their trip in the opposite direction that I had been going, so I had been everywhere they hadn't been yet! I was able to give them some good advice about hiking Zion and parts of California. Hurray for being useful to someone for once! They were from Israel - Dan and Leia - and were backpacking through the southern US. Very nice couple!

I decided to finish up the afternoon with a tour of the southern overlooks of the park. It's a very nice drive down to Rainbow Point and there's lots of places to stop and take pictures. I actually saw Dan and Leia at the point, and every overlook thereafter! Pretty funny. They asked to see some of my fossils and I was really bummed out that they were all packed away, as I think they would have really liked the fish fossils I collected in Wyoming (assuming that they haven't been destroyed by being in a muscle car for multiple weeks by now). Anyways, I got some cool pics from the overlooks, and one picture with Jane and the hoodoos.

Well, damn.

Not the greatest shot but there weren't really any opportunities to have your car juxtaposed with nearby hoodoos... so I made do!

I really, really should have started charging $5/picture at the beginning of this trip... I'd be rich!

And then it was on to the campground. Because my parents are no longer here, I am back to living in a tent! By now I kind of like it better, really. I stayed at Ruby's Campground, the most disorganized chaotic camping place I've ever seen. No layout to the tent sites at all, just kind of go and plop yourself down where there's a picnic table. I found a good spot with a place for Jane and it was next to a bunch of bikers, which is what I usually look for. I may have said it before somewhere on this blog, but bikers are the best people to camp near when you have a vintage car. They know what it's like to be on the road with no one but yourself to bail yourself out of trouble, and thus always seem to be super friendly and willing to lend a hand if needed. And they're usually well-traveled and know of cool spots to visit. So of course I promptly made friends with these guys. They pulled out the map and gave me some options of places to visit on my way to Monument Valley. So now I've got more options than I had before, and of course I've made exactly zero decisions about them.

I do know that tomorrow I'm going to leave the Bryce Canyon area and head to Monument Valley. I'd just really like to see the most-photographed place in the American West. After that, I may tour around southeastern Utah a little bit more, or I might head into southern Colorado. Who knows! Kelly signing out.