| It is said you should view Zion from below and Bryce from above.
This didn't make sense until a bit later on our travels. There is a way up
one of these cliffs but the trail up is not for the faint-hearted or those
suffering from vertigo. We stuck to the shuttle bus, and just ended up with
a crick in our necks. |  |
 | The canyon winds
around and becomes quite narrow. It has been cut through the ages by the
Virgin River flowing in the canyon bottom. |
| These cliffs are virtually vertical and are very popular with
rock climbers although I suspect they aren't very easy to climb. |  |
 | The road follows the
base of these cliffs as it winds along the canyon towards the Temple of
Sinawava (an ancient Indian teacher) |
| This late in the season, the river has little water in it and
some of the side pools are almost empty. After storms though, this can become
quite a dangerous place with flash floods. |  |
 | These minor trickles
over the rocks will be much more impressive when handling the floods of the
spring snow melts. |
| The canyon carries on beyond the end of the road but further
progress can only be made by wading up the river. We didn't do this but we
were assured by those who did that the water was still d***ed cold. We did
buy a video of the trip up the canyon so we can discover what is actually
round the corner. |  |
 | We also weren't too
sure about the weather which was looking a bit murky, and we did in fact get
a thunderstorm a bit later in the afternoon. |
| For the moment we headed back down the valley, stop by stop along
the shuttle route. We did get off at several places and walk to the relevant
viewpoint.. |  |
 | These were the
hanging gardens where plants have clung to cracks in the rocks where water
flows out to supply their roots. |
| Looking back we spotted these two climbers working their way up
the cliff. They did not appear to be moving very fast. |  |
 | And they had a long
way up to go. They were only a quarter of the way up by mid afternoon, so
they would be spending the night on the cliff. That is the hard way to do
it. |
| There are several geological strata some of which are of
different colours. Some of these divisions are quite striking. |  |
 | One of the features
is known as the Weeping Rock for reasons which are fairly obvious. It is
pretty wet and thus allows a totally different selection of plants to grow
in this one spot. |
| The strata delineation is shown very clearly here and
particularly the way the rocks have been uplifted causing the slant. |  |
 | It is difficult to
view this cliff as silt and mud particularly since at close range it feels
pretty hard. |
| This shows the valley floor and the impact of water. We had
actually climbed some way up the canyon sides on the Emerald Pools trails. |  |
 | It is very much fall
now and that can lead to some wonderful colours. Here there are just a few
trees which turn the brilliant red. |
| This was the view of the Virgin River looking upstream towards
where the canyon becomes very narrow. |  |
 | And someone certainly
appreciated the view since he was painting it. |
|