Not so Emerald Pools

We woke up to the sound of snow falling on the roof and this view: 

It rained all morning so we stayed in till noon and then caught the shuttle bus to the trail to the three (lower, middle and upper) Emerald Pools.

It was pretty darn muddy.  But great views across the canyon.

We were hiking up amid the juniper and pinyon pines so we had our eyes peeled for pinyon jays, but no luck.  No wonder, we heard from a park ranger yesterday that the pinyon Jay population has fallen by 80 percent!

But we did see scrub jays

 

Towhees, a golden eagle, a says phoebe and ravens.

The rest of the hordes of visitors also thought this was a great hike to take.  Frankly, it was nuts.  

Some of the hordes.  We're walking behind a waterfall here.  I'm getting dripped on.

We spent all our time stepping aside to let people pass or rushing ahead to get out of someone's way. You really couldn't enjoy the scenery.

Then when we got to the Emerald pool

it was not very emerald due to all the flooding and because of the high water the destination had been reduced to this tiny platform.   

See my look of anguish?  Aagh get me out of here!

And there were another 150 people in line to stand on that spot.  

Waterfalls were pretty spectacular though.

In normal times you could probably hop over the creek, but we had to wade across it.  It did wash the red mud off our shoes.

They did provide a chain to hang onto to avoid getting washed over the falls, but we declined to Ford this crossing.

Then back through the mud to get down to the shuttle.

Xx

To Zion

We managed to snag a 2-day reservation in Zion National Park when someone cancelled so that was our next destination.

 These red rock formations looked lovely covered in snow on our route from Lake Powell to Zion.  But then it started snowing hard.

But the snow never stuck to the roads. Just before the entrance to Zion National Park we saw turkeys foraging along the highway. 

 At the entrance to the park they measure your RV.  If you're higher than 11 feet or wider than 7 feet you have to pay a $15 fee and they stop the opposing traffic to allow you to drive down the middle of a tunnel.  If your RV is higher than 13 feet or longer than 40 feet or your truck and trailer measure more than 50 feet combined, you have to turn around and take a longer route.  Our trailer is 8 feet wide so we had to pay up but we were able to carry on.

The road winds down into Zion Canyon past some spectacular rocks.

We navigated the tight turns without incident and made our way to our campsite.

In the shadow of the Watchman peak.

By noon we were set up and we headed over to the visitor centre to catch the shuttle bus up the canyon.  When we last visited they hadn't instituted the shuttles yet.  We drove down the canyon but couldn't stop till the very end because there were no camping spots.

We took the shuttle to the very end for the Riverside trail.

Busy!  Quite a change from our hikes at Roosevelt Lake. Saw a rock squirrel.

Ordinarily you can hike the Narrows by wading up the river from the end of the Riverside Trail.  But it was closed because of high water levels.  Usually water seeps through rocks but now it was shooting out.

We managed to evade the crowds for a while on the walk back by following an unpaved path along the Virgin River.

I swear there are more Steller's jays in Zion than anywhere in the world! 

Bird of the Day!

Unlike our BC birds, southwestern jays have white streaks on their faces.

On our shuttle back we walked up the short trail to the weeping rock.

More of a spouting rock today.

You can walk behind the waterfall.

 

See?

Running around Rocks

 And then the next morning we woke up to this.

There was the lake. There was the blue sky.  There were the colourful rocks.  We just couldn't see anything in the gloom, everything was gray.

We drove down the road to do the Beehive trail.  A trail outlined with rocks leads up to 

and around these rock formations.

We had fun clambering about.

It was a sunny but blustery day. We never took off our down jackets.

We had so much fun that in the afternoon we drove to a place called the Chains  that overlooks the lake above the dam.

Imagine how narrow the canyon was here.  There was no trail here.

We just clambered over the rocks

And down to the lake.  In warmer weather people come here to swim.

The white shows how high the water once was.

The water is very deep and very clear.

Later in the day Leo photographed this rainbow from our campsite as he was coming back from his run.

To Lake Powell

Leo looked out the window on our first morning at Roosevelt Lake and saw a roadrunner, but I hadn't seen one yet.  But thus morning it showed up as we were getting ready to leave so Leo got this shot.

Later we were using the sanidump and we heard this weird call.  I looked in the direction of the sound and there he was sitting in a tree singing away.

I managed to get a few shots with Leo's camera and then this happened:

I have never seen a roadrunner in a tree before or flying.  Just on the road, running.

We left Roosevelt Lake in the rain and it continued till we got to the pine forest around Payson, when it started to snow.

By the time we reached Strawberry, it was sticking pretty good.  At Flagstaff we decided to stop for lunch for an hour in the hope that things warmed up.  Flagstaff was clearly the high point (6909 feet!) of the trip and afterwards the snow turned to rain.

We drove through the bleakest part of Navaho Country, just rock and sand, very little vegetation in the pouring rain.

It was still raining when we arrived at Wahweap Campground in the Glen Canyon Recreation Area on Lake Powell.  It was cold and windy and there was hardly anyone camping.  

We couldn't remember why we'd liked this place so much six years ago.  (Well, for one thing it was warm.)

I did remember that we had a view of the lake and now we couldn't see it at all.  Could the lake level really have dropped that much?

A long cold drab and dismal day.

Super Bloom

 Coming back from the Pigeon Spring trailhead we came upon that Arizona phenomenon, the super bloom.

We've seen these before but not where we could jump out of the truck and immerse ourselves.

Mostly poppies with lupines.

Lots of purple in this shot.