Last Day at Bryce Canyon Area

May 31, 2016  Bryce Canyon area.

We decided to take one last visit to Bryce Canyon but took a little detour first.  The tunnels in Red Canyon were very pretty today.  There wasn't a lot of traffic and we managed to get a couple of good pictures without cars and people.  Gerry got her stamp from the Red Canyon visitor center and added it to her collection.

1st Tunnel

2nd Tunnel

 The Tropic Reservoir sign showed it was a 7 mile dirt road drive to the area and we couldn't pass that up.  I had downloaded 4 geocaches near the reservoir and we found one quickly.  However, the next one was quite a challenge.  It was down a narrow dirt road that became even smaller as we drove about a mile or so to the cache.  Parts of the "road" were washed out and it was rough and we actually needed our "all wheel" drive tranny to kick in.  All we could think of was that we had to come back the same way.

I parked near the cache and then started up a small hill to retrieve it.  The GPS signal was bouncing around.   It finally settled down and I found the cache that was last found in October 2015.  Not a lot of traffic in the area I presumed.   Gerry was worried about me and started to look for me when I came down the hill.

Cache hidden in center tree

 We had driven part way around Tropic Reservoir on the West side and I didn't want to back track so we kept going.  Eventually, we arrived at the feeder creek and crossed over a large culvert to make our way back to the East side of the lake.

Tropic Reservoir

There was another cache near a spring and we looked for it but couldn't find it.  It may have been muggled or we just didn't look hard enough.  The spring was fenced off to keep the cattle away from it.  Gerry said the water tasted cool and good so she filled up a water bottle to take with us.

Nice hat

 We ran out of time the other day when we went to Bryce Canyon and missed three of the overlooks.  Gerry wanted to see Thor's Hammer and Anvil so we zoomed over to Bryce Canyon to check it out.

We were a little surprised to see so many hikers making their way down the trails into the canyon at such a late hour.  I imagine they are in better hiking condition than we are so it must have worked out fine for them.

Thor's Hammer

Gerry took this nice panorama of the view from Fairyland Canyon overlook.  It is hard to capture the beauty of the area and show how immense it is.  

We checked out the Tropic, UT area nearby and picked up some more geocaches and decided to call it a day.  By this time it was late and we were worn out from all the walking.  

If you haven't seen Bryce Canyon and the area, then you should put it on your "bucket list" to visit at least once.  We have been there 4-5 times and still enjoy seeing all the hoodoos and the beauty of the canyon.

We decided to extend another day at the campground and just take it easy and rest up.  I did manage to wash the car and remove the 100 lbs of dust from it, both inside and outside.  Other than that we just relaxed and enjoyed the nice weather.