On Friday Shawn returned from his business trip in Seattle. Bryn drove back up to Salt Lake City to pick him up and go to Planet Fitness (finally!) as the account is in Shawn's name. After lifting, we went to Taqueria 27, which was a great lunch spot. They let us hang out using their WiFi for a while afterwards to finish up our work for the day. Once we finished work, we went next door to Bar X. We had gotten several recommendations for this place and it had a dark, speakeasy vibe. It made us of think of Publick House back in Boston because of all the dark wood trim. We got dinner at the Green Pig Pub and then went to Bodega, but they had a private event going on so Shawn didn't get to see The Rest.
For our first weekend day together in a couple of weeks, we went to Park City for a ski day. It turned out we were on the first day that they required parking reservations for the year, so we had to park at the town's high school and get shuttled a mile to the lifts. The snow here was very good, but the mountain is very segmented and has a ton of super short lifts you need to string together to get places (similar to the way Okemo is back in Vermont). Additionally, the gondola that connects the two halves of the resort was done for reconstruction so we only got to the see the side of the mountain we parked on. All that being said, we got in 10 runs on a variety of terrain before Shawn's legs ran out (this was his first day of the season) and the light was getting flat enough to be annoying. We would definitely go back here, but you need to have a planned strategy to tackle the segmented nature of the resort. The shuttle back to the Bundra took us over 60 minutes, which was a downer for the end of the day. The rest of the weekend was recovery from the ski day and Shawn getting in his last long run before the half marathon in Vegas.
On Monday we did a final trip into Salt Lake City and worked at a couple of locations throughout the day. We had a great lunch at Red Lotus and worked from a brewery called Bewilder in the afternoon. For dinner we went to Whiskey Street, another recommendation Bryn had gotten earlier in the trip. It was phenomenal. Bryn got a steak sandwich and Shawn had the Cuban sandwich. We shared the butterscotch blondie for dessert, which was one of the best desserts Bryn has ever had. Their whiskey selection is extensive and their cocktails were great.
In Bryce Canyon we did the Queens Garden + Navajo Loop. This was a fairly short and easy hike, taking us a couple of hours with all the stops for photos. We did it clockwise (hiking down into the canyon on the Queen's Garden Trail and up out of the canyon via the Navajo trail) and highly recommend this direction as you end up facing the views more this way.
The first half of the hike had spectacular hoodoos (tall rock formations) and views of the Bryce Amphitheater. The layer of white snow contrasted well with the red rock, producing some stunning scenery. Climbing up from the canyon floor via the Navajo Loop involved switchbacking up between some very tall red rock walls, and provided a nice change from the more open descent. Altogether, this was the favorite hike we've done for both us.
For dinner we got some very good pizza at The Pizza Cart in Cedar City, and then tried to get a round of drinks at the Applebee's across from our parking lot. It turns out that you can't get drinks in a restaurant in Utah without ordering food. Being stuffed full of pizza, we just went to bed instead.
The next day we moved a little further south and hiked in Zion National Park. For this hike we selected Angel's Landing (a lottery based permit is required), which is a longer and steeper hike than we did the day before in Bryce. This involves climbing out of Zion Canyon along the West Rim Trail, which has some good views of the canyon before turning into a smaller canyon to ascend further. From Scout's Lookout, the trail splits off on a spur to Angel's Landing itself. This section involves more scrambling and has chains bolted into the rock to help hikers keep their footing. We did about half of the distance of the spur before reaching the narrow ridge connecting the two major knobs. The trail was fairly covered with snow and ice at this elevation, and our Yaktrax were not really up to the task. We turned back here instead of continuing over the natural rock bridge (with a sheer 1000 foot drop on either side) to reach the final ascent. This hike has yielded a couple of deaths over the past few years, so our caution felt warranted.
When we had made our way back to the canyon floor we did the scenic drive through the rest of the canyon as well as the nearby tunnel. We stopped at the Zion Canyon Brewpub for a post hike beer before returning to our camper.
We had a bit of a struggle winding down as our battery was not holding a charge well (we eventually fixed it by adding some distilled water) compounded by someone parking directly in front of our hitch until the middle of the night, meaning we couldn't hook the camper up to the truck to blast some much needed heat. We washed the truck and ate some extremely disappointing Thai food. At 1 am, Bryn ended up putting the Bundra in position to hitch in the morning (making sure no one could block us) and hooked the trailer's electrical wire to the Bundra to run the heater for a bit.
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