Got some catching up to do...

I arrived in Las Vegas Thursday August 9th, 2007 for the 5th time in 2 years. Made a bee line too rental cars heading out of town as fast as possible toward Utah and Bryce Canyon national park. I am not a big city guy. I had a 4.5 hour drive through desert and over mountain ridges ahead of me. The temperature on the dash of my Subaru Forester ranged from 106 deg. at sea level to 68 deg at 5000 ft.

As luck would have it, while driving on the 75mpg roads, a rock strikes my windshield leaving a crack. I observe the crack grow longer and longer. Finally, over a 2 hour period the crack settling at 8 inches right across the windshield. Crap, should have gotten the rental car insurance, but who ever does? O well, lunch stop at Carl’s Junior, we don’t have them on the East coast, made up for it. Yummalicious junior double bacon cheeseburger.

Cedar Break NP – 1 night of front country camping on my way to Bryce. This is a very small park (www.nps.gov/cebr) at 10,000 foot elevation. The major attraction is the amazing amphitheater with hundreds of hoodoos that have slowly formed from wind, rain and freeze/thaw. This is just a warm up for Bryce and its amphitheater.

At +10,000 foot elevation my 6 mile trail run was interesting. I ran from the parks camp ground to and around the Alpine Pond Loop Trail. Obviously due to the elevation, the air was very thin. I was fine on the flats and downhill, but the second I hit any sort of uphill bump or greater, I was done and had to walk that section and felt like I was sucking air through a straw.

Onward to Bryce – 76 miles east of Cedar Break. I go straight to the North Campground, do the self check-in for camp site #107 on loop D. It’s for tent campers only. Quiet and far from the generators that run on the gas guzzling houses on wheels (Winnebagos). The camp site was pretty empty and reservations are probably never needed. I can’t imagine this place ever filled up unless you show up on a Friday or Saturday evening around 6pm. But I got there early and had many sites to choose from. BTW, I generally don’t camp in campgrounds and prefer backcountry. However, at Bryce, most of the amazing scenery is viewed from the rim trail and just below. All backcountry camping is pretty far from their with limited supplies of water.

After pitching my tiny 2 man backpacking tent overlooked a large empty field, I set out for exploration and adventure. The amphitheater and hoodoos are incredible. Views from the rim trail are breathtaking and you really can’t go wrong with selecting locations if you want a good photo shoot. Track down Thor’s Hammer and the Alligator! Just before during and after sunrise and sunset are the best time to get great pictures. The colors burst out.

By complete luck, my timing at Bryce coincided with the annual Perseids Meteor shower. Once a year earth travels through bunch of space junk and you can observer about 80 shooting stars per hour. Bryce is known to have optimal conditions for star gazing since there are now citys anywhere close to artificially brighten the sky. Photographing the shower is particularly challenging however and I woke each morning around 4am to give it a try. Hiking into the canyon from the rim trail was spooky in the pitch black, it was a new moon. I am pretty sure I was the only one crazy enough to do such a thing and had the amphitheater to my self. Setting up with my camera and tripod I took set up for long exposure shots. From 10 to 30 minutes on my Nikon D80. Needless to say, my battery would die within an hour of this. As long exposures really suck the juice.