Road Trip - Bryce Canyon Day 2

Our second day at Bryce Canyon begins with an early start.  We have to be at the trail ride corral by 7:00am so to get three of us through a single bathroom, packed, checked out, a bite of breakfast, and drive to the canyon, we are up at 5:00am.  With yesterday's weather closing in on us late in the day, I got up first, apprehensive about what I would find when I poked my head out the door.  Even in the pre-dawn dark, and much to my relief, I could tell it was a beautiful morning.  It's on!

Folks, I took a lot of pictures, hundreds.  It was hard thinning them out to something suitable for a blog post but I got it down to 47.  Like in a previous post that was heavy with images, this one will be more of a photo essay, narration will be minimal.  Cyndee scoffs at that. She says I won't be able to help myself and blab about everything.  You be the judge.

 

 The head tourist wrangler "sized us up" and picked a ride that supposedly matched our temperament.  I got a mule.  Go figure.

Dean was matched up with a gelding named Rooster.  Oh boy, anything with the name Rooster is usually trouble.  My old mule was named Ike.

It did not take long for Rooster to live up to his name.  He kept walking up to other horses and talking smack.  Dean had his hands full trying to rein him around and away from the others

My bride and I have been nearly constant companions for forty years and I have seen her give me a lot of looks but I have never seen the look I am getting in this picture.

Cyndee got paired up with another gelding, Zeke.  Old Zeke looked tired most of the time.

Check out all the rides in the corral behind Cyndee.  They put somebody on every one of them and we all headed into the canyon one behind the other.  But we were divided into strings of six or eight, each string lead by a trail guide cowboy.  Our string was the last string out of the corral.  Our little group of six were made up of "experienced" riders, three women each had several head of horses at home and Cyndee, Dean and I were from Texas.  We had to be experienced, right?  Our trail guide, Dillon, was pretty happy with getting a whole string of experienced riders.  We learned as the ride went along that he was recently married and that he was still feeling the effects of indulgences of the reception party.  He was pretty happy at the thought that he would not have to be doing any yelling to keep our rides on the trail and together.

The weather was really cooperating.  The air was clear and cool with the sun shining brilliantly.

Almost every photograph from this point on was shot from the hip.  Ike the mule was a stiff-legged 'ol cuss, trying to look through the viewfinder of the camera was an exercise in frustration, and pain.  With every step the camera would thrust back and forth and do its best to leave a mark on my head.  That stiff walk would soon be leaving its mark somewhere else.

 Dean and Rooster make the first descent in casual comfort.  The trail is wide and well taken care of.

That's Dillon at the top of the trail.  He is riding a little paint mare that is all business.  She seems to respond to Dillon's thoughts and would rather gallop than walk.











Dillon says he couldn't begin to count how many pictures have been taken of him but he is sure that he is on a box of Cheerios or something in China.

 

 Here is my view of the trail ride.  Ike's big ears were a part of any forward looking.  And man was that sun bright!













Bryce Canyon is 'only' 1,000 feet deep.  In many spots, like this one, the floor is wide and open with vegetation that is not sparse but not thick either.  The hoo doos that seem to be a jumbled mass from the rim become singular and more defined from this perspective.

Dillon told us the name of this one but I can't remember it.  I do remember that he said when he and the other cowboys have been working too many hours that they think of it as a pretty dance hall girl.  Looks like one of those ancient aliens on the Discovery Channel.  But then again I have only been on the trail an hour.

The climate can be pretty harsh and much of the vegetation has adapted a strategy of growing into twisted shapes.  I don't know what that does for them, but they almost all do.

On our way to Peek-A-Boo Loop we ascended and descended several times.  Our steeds were definitely putting in a days work.



As the morning got longer in the tooth we started seeing numbers of hikers.  You have to look closely but there are about a half-dozen hikers along the foot of the hoo doo stopped to watch our little string amble by.

 

 

 Check out Ike's alignment with the trail.  He preferred to put hoof-prints where no hoof-prints have ever been.  I repeatedly felt his rear-end slide as the soft edge of the outside of the trail sloughed away under our combined weight.  Reigning him over was a waste of effort, he is the proverbial stubborn mule.








Another habit that Ike had was to just keep walking a straight line, even when the trail didn't.  He would stride up to turns like this one, raise his head, put up his ears and hang out over the edge.  This dang mule was sightseeing!









In this case he was looking in on some of his stable mates that were on a trail a couple hundred feet down.













The trail, while well maintained was never the less steep in places.  It was on several slopes like this that we acquired our most tender saddle sores.












Ike is doing his usual good job of keeping me on the edge where the view is unobstructed.  Yikes.
































Look closely at the center of this photo.  You should see four horses and riders as they are approaching a tunnel.  We'll be there in awhile.

Enlarged and cropped from the above picture.

This is one seriously twisted tree.  Its called corkscrew pine.












It was our turn to pass through what Dillon called the All Natural, Man-made Tunnel.

The views out of the other side of the tunnel were just, wow.

We had passed the halfway point and found ourselves climbing steep, tight switchbacks in a slot canyon.



 The above pictures were looking back the way we came through the slot canyon.  Below is the view ahead.



  

 

 That is Dillon at the top of the trail.  His little mare pretty much ran up the switchbacks.  At this point Dillon is leaned forward in the saddle, arms crossed and propped up on the saddle horn.  I think he is regretting his wedding party exuberance.  But he was always the professional and kept us informed and entertained.

 

That is not a dead end that Dillon is sitting in front of, there is another all-natural, man-made tunnel in the crevasse of the wall.  

The first tunnel was only about a horse-length long, this one was three or four times as long.

It was pretty cool being inside the tunnel and watching the view reveal itself as we approached the outlet.

As soon as the tunnel is cleared, switchbacks start another descent.















After a couple of switchbacks coming out of the second tunnel you start a section called The Devil's Slide.














More of Devil's Slide.  Cyndee pretty much has a death grip on that saddle horn.

A lot of Cyndee's view of the trail ride was the southern end of a northbound John & Ike.

This was the last named structure we saw as we exited the canyon.  See the part that looks like an old woman playing a piano?  They call it Old Woman Playing Piano.

Hey, that is how Dillon told it to us.

We made our way back to the corral where we tried  to dismount.  Somehow the knees just would not function and the legs were rubbery beyond belief.  Some "experienced" riders we were.  The three of us sort of held each other up as we wobbled back to the truck and started our drive home to the North Rim.