Hoodoos!

Richfield, Utah, where we camped last night, is a lovely town: old-fashioned in a good way, with a main street that appears alive and well-used and a green park in the center of town. The main street is wide, and all the storefronts are occupied. There is even a non-chain department store in the center of town! It does have a very strange street-naming system, though, where all streets have direction-and-number names. For example, the campground was located at 600 West 600 South. What? Our grumpy little GPS didn't care for that one bit; it's a good thing the KOAs have well-placed signage!

We recently drove through several towns with very wide main streets; we have been reading a book about living in the old west, and we learned that the streets were made wide enough to allow a team of horses and wagon to turn completely around. The wide streets work well for modern towns, too, as they allow room for more than two lanes of traffic.

We followed Route 24 south from Richfield, and then Route 12 through Cannonville. Both roads were beautiful. We initially passed through high desert land, with dramatic and varied mountains all around; then, we travelled through an area, near Loa, that was more agricultural in appearance. Eventually, we climbed higher and passed lovely aspen groves, all with yellow autumn foliage. The bright yellow aspen leaves glow in the sun, and shake in the wind with a soft rattling sound. What a beautiful sight, and sound! The height of the road also provided spectacular views, out across endless wrinkled mountains, plains and mesas.

Both routes passed by several state parks and Capitol Reef National Park, all of which we wish we had time to visit. We would have loved to see Goblin State Park, with all its goblin-shaped rock formations; thanks for the suggestion, Dad! Next trip...

As we drove further south, we entered another desert area, with colorful mountains, cliffs and canyons. At one point, the road wound between two tall walls of red rock, and, at another point, the mountain sloped steeply down on BOTH sides of the road.

We stopped in the little town of Cannonville to reserve our campsite for the evening, and then drove on just a bit further to Bryce National Park. We hurried through the park to reach the end of the park road by sunset, stopping just long enough at the overlooks to gape down at the strange rock formations, called hoodoos, in the canyon. We enjoyed the sunset over the park, and drove very carefully (we saw a total of about twenty deer as we drove out through the park!) back to our campsite. Tomorrow morning, we'll go back to Bryce for a more leisurely visit and a short hike. Unfortunately, Molly is once again forbidden to hike with us. She says that she's going to stop paying her taxes if the government continues to treat her like a second-class citizen. At the very least, she intends to bark at her congressman.