Southern Utah seems to be about as interesting as central Utah is boring, which is to say very. The nicest part about central Utah was that you could drive fast, so from Salt Lake City we had our longest driving day in terms of miles.  We set up camp at the campground in Red Canyon, about 15 minutes from Bryce.  The campground had a view of the red rocks while still having enough tree cover for shade and hanging our hammock.  We initially planned to just spend time here and skip Bryce since national parks tend not to be very dog friendly, but it seemed a shame to miss out on Bryce when we were so close.

So our first day we went to Bryce Canyon, which isn’t a canyon at all, but is a really cool set of rock formations formed mostly by ice freezing and thawing – and maybe a bit of magic because I find it hard to believe these rocks got this way through any natural process.  The park also turned out to be a lot friendlier to dogs than we expected since 90% of what you do at the park if you’re not doing a long hike is get out at the various lookout points.  There was also 1 paved trail along the rim that dogs could hike on, which was find since that was about all the hiking the kids could handle as well.  From above watching the people hike into the rocks makes me think of watching rats in a labyrinth.  Maybe one day I’ll want to return to hike here, but hiking where there’s no water at the end and your return trip is uphill isn’t ideal in my book.  Geneveve got her 2nd Junior Ranger badge of the trip, and while she was excited I could tell her initial enthusiasm wasn’t quite as strong as before.

The next day we hiked around Red Canyon, which also has very pretty rock formations like Bryce, but not as many.  Even better it has a lot fewer people and is a lot more accessible because the hikes mostly start at the base of the rocks and go up around them instead of starting at a really high overlook and then hiking down.  Geneveve seemed to fall in love with the rocks and the hikes here, leading the Arches hike all the way and declaring she wanted to live there.  Ubu was also thrilled at the hike since we could let her off leash since there was hardly anybody else around.  We also did the Mossy Cave hike outside Red Canyon, back toward Bryce.  The hike itself is really short, but it has a waterfall!  None of use were expecting the waterfall to actually have water in August when we read the trail description, but I guess since the water is diverted from a river it flows year round.  One evening after the kids were in bed I went for a trail run at sunset, and even nicer than the view at the top was being able to hike and run my own pace on a trail instead of motivating kids, although the view as very nice as well.

After three nights camping in the area we figured we’d head closer to the Grand Canyon.  However, the drive to the south rim was too long for one day, and we decided in the interest of not burning everyone else out on canyons and rocks we’d skip the north rim.  Also it was very tempting to head to Zion National Park, but from what we read we’d really want to hike there and the kids were getting burned out on that.  So we made a stop over near Page, AZ for a few days to hang out on Lake Powell.

Unfortunately I got a nasty cold that knocked me out right when we got there, so we weren’t very active, which was probably just as well to give everyone a break.  Since it was the weekend we prebooked a campsite at Wahweap, which unfortunately was incredibly hot and had almost no trees so it seemed like no tent campers hung out there during the day at all.  However, the camping included admission to the nearby resort’s pools.  So basically for 2 days we just went to the pool.  Geneveve loved the pool again.  I’m pretty convinced at this point that the main thing holding her back from making progress in learning to swim the last few years is that she was just cold, because when it’s really hot out or the water is warm she can’t get enough of learning to swim.  I wouldn’t leave her alone in the deep end yet, but she’s making trips into the deep end with some help, and swimming underwater like a fish.

We also went on a tour of the Glenn Canyon dam, which is pretty impressive.  I forget the exact details, but I think they poured concrete 24 X 7 for a few years to build the dam.  The canyon they filled in to make the lake must have been beautiful.  The lake there now appears to wind through the same sort of beautiful red rock we’ve been seeing all over.  We talked about renting a house boat to take through the lake, but prices were over $500 a night, and we would have had to have Xena in a lifejacket the whole time not to worry about here.  Seems like a fun thing to do one day with another family though.

From here it’s on to the Grand Canyon.