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Look beyond the heat and vastness of rocky plains – Utah is tough and beautiful.
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We drove to Utah from Toronto for a week of camping, hiking, and general adventuring. The trip was planned to be more of a camping trip than a just a road trip, but it felt like we spent a lot of time in the car, even excluding the cross-the-continent part, which I didn’t mind because Utah was hot, hot, and more hot, give me AC any day! The first part of the adventure started in Zion with an overnight hike of The Narrows. We started at Chamberlains Ranch and went “top down” towards the Temple of Sinawawa, a 26km trek. It was a pretty cool hike…literally cool. The tall canyon walls shielded us from the intense sun and the constant clomping through the river water acted like a heat sink pulling away any heat the sun threw at us. The entire time I was in the Narrows I kept thinking about how hot the rest of the week would be without all that plentiful water. I was really getting used to this 16 mile oasis. Once we exited the Narrrows, the full extent of the Utah heat hit us. Sun rays blazing down; the heat of the parking lot asphalt burnt our feet as we changed out of our hiking clothes. Zero escape from the heat. Back into the car. AC on full blast. We head off to Bryce Canyon for the next part of the adventure. The views of Bryce are truly breathtaking. But before that we must (nearly) freeze. We were not expecting an overnight temperature drop of 35 degC – Canada has nothing on this. How do Utahns even deal with this crazy weather?!? Once the sun rose, the temperature didn’t take long to resume roasting levels for our hike through the canyons. Whilst inside the canyons I quickly lost perspective of what a beautiful and large place I was in. It was like looking closely at grains of sand on a beach. But I was in between the grains of sand and the canyon was the beach. Each are beautiful in their own right, but one needs to experience all the perspectives to fully grasp where they’re standing. Canyonlands was the next part of the trip. We got to the park after dark and we couldn’t find the trail head for our backcountry camp site so we crashed a vacant car camping site instead. It wasn’t a very eventful day/night unless you count sweating continuously at night. It felt like an oven in the tent ~ 29 degC with dead still air. This definitely tested my heat tolerance. I would have slept outside in the open air but the mosquitos? were buzzing around. I’m not sure how I would have dealt with this scenario again. Perhaps bring a tiny USB powered fan? I tried to wipe my memory of the ordeal with copious amounts of ice cold Cherry Coke. In the morning we packed up quickly and darted off to Arches National park. This day was a bit of blurr for me. I remember struggling in the beginning to get up to Delicate Arch but found my rhythm and powered upwards for selfies. The arch itself was fascinating. It’s unbelievable that a HUGE freestanding horseshoe shaped arch just forms of out sand, salt, and time. The trip is nearing the end. Our last stop is Denver, Colorado. The original plan was to arrive in the morning to climb/hike Mount Beirstadt, but the mountain forecast called for a chance of rain so the climb was called off <sad face>. We instead explored Downtown Denver a bit. Saw lots of Prairie Dogs at the wildlife refuge…They’re really cute when they stand up tall. There were also bison and deer but our car didn’t see any. The rest of Denver was just city decompression time and silliness before driving back to Toronto. I hope you enjoyed reading this – come again!
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TLDR: Zion Narrows, Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, and Denver. It was hot, then really cold, then hot again. It’s a desert. We ate more fast food than we would have liked (and Cherry Coke).