Vaca 2021, Day 9, Part I - Bryce Canyon

Rough, hot night at the Kanab house.  I laid in bed for a while but there was no hope of sleep as it was hot!  And yes, I'm spoiled... I realize this as I type.  I know that there are plenty of people who have no A/C and live their lives just fine.  I do NOT admire those people but I do have some mad respect for them!

Anyway, I finally fell asleep with my feet in a chair, my torso mostly in a love seat with an automan involved to help bridge the gap.  Why?  Because I was almost directly under a ceiling fan that was being ran on the "stun" setting!!  

This was likely around 12:45'ish when I found this spot.  I woke up eventually to more suitable temps and made my way back to the bedroom where I tried to start the night. 

No sooner had I pulled the blankets up did Lesley's alarm go off...   It was betwixt 4am and 4:30am.

Poop...

Well, no worse time than the present to get up and get ready for a sizable hike!  And that's just what we did!  We got everyone up and functioning...  Thankfully there was a nice coffee maker in the house!  It's time to hit the road with some strong coffee in tow.

An early morning shot of our drive somewhere North of Kanab, UT.  This was one of the "greener" areas and you can actually see water in the picture. Pretty impressive.

This beauty had taken more selfie's than I was aware of, by a large margin.  I suppose whatever it takes to get her taking less pictures of my over-sized carcass is probably a good thing...

We got to Bryce Canyon around 7am and were starting our hike.  It was chilly but after a few minutes of descent, it felt great and even as large as I am, I didn't sweat until about two hours later, when we began ascending the other side; which makes this a good time to mention that we started at Sunset Point and finished at Sunrise Point.

Lots of pictures from here and likely little mouthing off from me...

This is one of the first things you see walking up to begin the hike down!  It's a good first impression!!

And this...

And this...  I'm thinking that this is going to be amazing!

This view doesn't suck either!

If you see a finger in a picture,  there's a 99 % chance that Lesley took it!  LOL!

I don't remember exactly WHAT was said here, but it was a joke aimed at the same mom who took this picture!  You can see how proud he was!

More switchbacks!

Rob and Caleb debating on taking a shortcut.

There choices are now obvious;  Rob took it and Caleb thought better of it.   Rob got about that far when Mom noticed him and yelled at him to go back up and come down like a human.

The boys gathered rocks that were near and put mom in "jail" for yelling at Rob.  LOL!

We struggled a bit with these which made for some funny moments!

I had made a wildly inappropriate comment just as I started drinking from Rob's backpack and when everyone reacted to that comment, I started laughing, choked on the water and had some come out my nose.  The boys are laughing at me and watching me try to recover...  I've got a LOT of growing up to do.

At this point, we're heading back up the other side of the park.

The water backpacks were life savers on some of our hikes!

Watch'yer step!!!!  There were a LOT of places to easily die in this park.

The fams!!!  I look like I'm trying to hide quickly.

That's Rob the prairie dog in the gift shop/museum at Bryce.  There's a funny story here too, but it's a bit more personal, but just know that there was much laughing!!!

  

After we left the gift shop / museum, we did the scenic drive and got a bit of a different view of the park with some MUCH shorter hikes!  

This was also the point when Rob, Caleb and myself were together as mom walked off in a different direction (probably sick of the 3 of us!!).  Another mom walked up with perfect timing when Caleb, said to Rob, "man, stop touching my nipples!".  The mom did her best to act like she heard nothing which, of course, was hilarious to us 3 dorks.  This picture was taken after we had recovered and mom was rejoining us.

Another short hike...

We left the park at about 10:30am, which was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch for most places. 

So, we drove to the town of Tropic, filled the gas tank and had lunch at Rustlers.  We had wanted to eat at i.d.k. BBQ but they didn't open until 11:30 and we weren't keen on waiting.  We maybe should have tho...  the food at Rustlers was ok, but when preparing for vaca, we had watched a video on the fancy youtubes and i.d.k. BBQ was in it and it looked amazing.  

That being said, it was getting HOT outside and the dining room for i.d.k. BBQ was closed, so you either had to eat in your car or sit outside getting baked.

And as memory serves, we had a Hispanic waitress at Rustlers who pronounced "chocolate" in the cutest way ever!  We were trying to think of different ways to get her to say it again.

I'm cutting day 9 off here since there's already 50+ pictures and we're now heading to Zion!  

If you're still reading at this point, I thank you!!