One of my favorite people left last week. Her name is Gwen and her and her husband and her headed back to South Carolina this past week. As a result of her departure, I am now almost all mornings, and that means 7:30. I'm sure everyone knows how well I do with mornings. But in honor of her leaving we decided to have a photo shoot in the gift shop with these "AWESOME" hippie jackets that we sell. They're sooooo unattractive! These are some of the women of the gift shop/other departments above and below, you will find our version of Native American Charlie's Angels. We sell a lot of fake weapons in the gift shop, so we have spears, obsidian knives, hatchets, stone hatchety things and some arrows. It was quite entertaining. But now Gwen is gone. Bobbie, (the woman next to me in the below picture) leaves in a week. Dolly, the Spanish one has to have surgery so will be gone for two weeks, and someone was just fired. Therefore, we are about to be very understaffed!
Other than that, on my last two days off, my friend Dash and I went to Lake Powell via what's known as the Burr Trail Road, which cuts through the southern part of Capitol Reef National Park. This road cut straight through the Grand Staircase, and was actually paved, but also crossed through what's known as the "waterpocket fold" (the part of Capitol Reef we went through.
In this part of Capitol Reef, you could see a much broader variety of rock formations but also the colors of the strata in the cliffs was much more diverse. It was also much warmer than it is here at Bryce. Finally we arrived in Bullfrog at Lake Powell and went swimming and then exploring. My car did some very successful off-roading to check out some of the "primitive" (as they were called) areas of Lake Powell. After a nice dinner (not employee dining room food) we had a fire and hiked down to the lake under an almost-full moon.
The next day, we traveled back through Capitol Reef and went hiking along a side-road called Upper Muley Twist. I could only make it so far back in my car, so we had to hike the remaining 2.5 miles of the road. We saw some natural arches, lots of wild flowers, and lots of beautiful cliffs. Once we reached the end of the road however, the sky was black in the distance.
We thought we had time to hike this half a mile overlook of the canyon, which provided us with the view above, but when we got there and looked back, the sky had surprisingly gotten blacker. Originally we had thought it was heading past us, but there was no avoiding it now, the entire sky was black. We began a quick hike back and out of nowhere, huge raindrops combined with pea-sized hail poured down upon us. It hit so hard that I thought the strong winds around us had blown debris into me, but then I glanced down and saw huge water droplets on my clothes. We began a run for a cave ahead of us, and within seconds were pretty much drenched. We got to the cave just in time, but after only a couple minutes water began pouring down the roof of the shelter on to us, so we had to run back out in the weather to keep from getting drenched that way.
I was really worried that my car wouldn't make it out, especially since the road we were hiking on looked like the picture above. I was completely nervous about driving down the road and out of the canyon, but we survived, completely drenched and cold. All in all, it was a surprising and amazing experience to be in a small flash flood. It was terrifying and shocking, and I definitely can't imagine being in and surviving a large flash flood. Afterwards we tried to do a few hikes, but dark clouds continued forming in the distance making us relatively nervous. The trip was amazing though and we experienced some amazing nature, and some phenomenal places. It was well worth it, and yes I understand the danger level involved. But we're o.k., so I can't help but view the craziness, the force, and the uniqueness of it, as a truly unique and awesome experience.
The next day, we traveled back through Capitol Reef and went hiking along a side-road called Upper Muley Twist. I could only make it so far back in my car, so we had to hike the remaining 2.5 miles of the road. We saw some natural arches, lots of wild flowers, and lots of beautiful cliffs. Once we reached the end of the road however, the sky was black in the distance.
We thought we had time to hike this half a mile overlook of the canyon, which provided us with the view above, but when we got there and looked back, the sky had surprisingly gotten blacker. Originally we had thought it was heading past us, but there was no avoiding it now, the entire sky was black. We began a quick hike back and out of nowhere, huge raindrops combined with pea-sized hail poured down upon us. It hit so hard that I thought the strong winds around us had blown debris into me, but then I glanced down and saw huge water droplets on my clothes. We began a run for a cave ahead of us, and within seconds were pretty much drenched. We got to the cave just in time, but after only a couple minutes water began pouring down the roof of the shelter on to us, so we had to run back out in the weather to keep from getting drenched that way.
I was really worried that my car wouldn't make it out, especially since the road we were hiking on looked like the picture above. I was completely nervous about driving down the road and out of the canyon, but we survived, completely drenched and cold. All in all, it was a surprising and amazing experience to be in a small flash flood. It was terrifying and shocking, and I definitely can't imagine being in and surviving a large flash flood. Afterwards we tried to do a few hikes, but dark clouds continued forming in the distance making us relatively nervous. The trip was amazing though and we experienced some amazing nature, and some phenomenal places. It was well worth it, and yes I understand the danger level involved. But we're o.k., so I can't help but view the craziness, the force, and the uniqueness of it, as a truly unique and awesome experience.
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