The Pumpkin Patch

Just a few days after arriving in Texas, my sister asked if I wanted to go along with our mom to chaperone my little nephew's kindergarten field trip to a nearby farm and pumpkin patch.

Western Belle Farms is a family-run farm in West, Texas, about half an hour north of Waco on I-35 (not west Texas, which is a different thing entirely).

The far had a number of fun activities for the kids to enjoy - a tractor hayride, a corn maze, a zipline, slides, and pumpkin picking. It was fun to enjoy the farm and to get to spend some time enjoying the nice, warm Texas autumn. My nephew had a great time as well.

You wouldn't believe how many different types of pumpkins there are! As we were leaving, we walked through the shop to pick up a few pumpkins as fall decorations for my mom's house. They came in all sorts of different colors - green, pink, even blue!

It's nice to be back in Texas... I just wish it were a little cooler here. It's been one of the hottest Octobers on record, and the first time in memory that the state has gone almost the full month without any rain. It's been in the 90s every day. 

I hope it'll cool off a little bit before Halloween. I get enough hot weather in Bangkok!

St. George and Red Butte

St. George, with a population just over 100,000, was the biggest city we'd seen all week. Leaving Zion, we checked in at the Mulberry Inn, a bed and breakfast with a long local history.

The grand fifteen-room mansion was built in 1873 by Edwin Gordon Woolley, a prominent local judge, carpenter, and partner in a mercantile firm. Known for his appreciation of luxury, Woolley imported fine woodwork, glass, and furnishings from England, creating what was regarded as the county's finest home.

The drawing room boasts a chandelier which was purchased from the St. George LDS Temple after a renovation, and furniture gifted by Brigham Young, whose historic winter home stands just across the street. A hidden door and attic hole in the house are thought to have once sheltered Mormon polygamists evading U.S. Marshals, adding to the mansion's storied history.

Today, each guest room in the house has been inspired by classic 18th and 19th century English literature. My parents stayed in the Phileas Fogg Suite; a steampunk sort of room designed to evoke the travels of the main character from Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. The highlight of the room was the bathtub built inside an authentic Ford Model T motorcar.

I stayed in the Sherlock Room, named of course for Sherlock Holmes.

The cozy attic room was inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, and even featured a wooden pipe and the famous detective's signature cloak and hat.

The next morning, it was time to leave St. George and drive back to Salt Lake City for our final full day in Utah. It's amazing how quickly the landscape and weather changes depending on the altitude.

The weather in St. George was mildly cool and comfortable, but as we drove up and over the mountains, we once again found ourselves surrounded by a snowscape.

Arriving in Salt Lake City, we once again found ourselves in a warm, pleasant, early autumn. It was a little bit too early to check into our hotel, and the weather was so nice that we decided to drive up to the University of Utah Campus, which sits in the mountains looking down on the city in the valley below, to visit the Red Butte Garden.

Operated by UU, the Red Butte Garden is a botanical garden and arboretum which contains 100 acres of gardens and several miles of hiking trails through native vegetation.

It was a nice way to spend the afternoon. In the evening, we checked into our hotel and enjoyed a curry pizza (at the appropriately named Curry Pizza). Now, our adventure in Utah was coming to an end and it was time to fly on to Texas.

Zion

To enter Zion National Park from the east, you have to drive through a tunnel more than a mile long hewn from the nearly impassable mountains surrounding the park. The tunnel was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Core in the late 1920s and opened in 1930.

Exiting the tunnel, you come out into a lush, green valley surrounded on all sides by rough, rocky mountains.

The sky overhead was dark and gloomy as we made our way into Zion, the third-busiest national park in the country (as of 2023). The scenery around us was stunning, but the traffic and crowds put an early damper on our visit. It was almost impossible to get a parking spot at the overcrowded visitor's center, and since most of the park's roads are closed for shuttle use only, we were forced to exit the park and pay a premium to park alongside the road in nearby Springdale.

It took more than an hour to find an available place to park in town, and some of us were starting to feel very grumpy. After a quick picnic lunch in the car, we were finally able to take the free shuttle into the park, but by this time it was already past noon.

Zion, like Grand Canyon National Park, does not allow private vehicles to drive inside the park. Instead, to cut down on traffic, the country's busiest parks operate a free hop-on-hop-off shuttle service which stops at various points of interest.

It's not too much of a hassle to take the shuttle, but it does mean that you sometimes have to wait for the next one to arrive.

Temple of Sinawava

The late start meant that we would really have to rush if we wanted to see some of the park's top sights. We ended up taking the shuttle to the very end of the loop where we got out to explore the Temple of Sinawava.

Named for Sinawava, the indigenous Paiute people's coyote god, the "temple" is a natural amphitheater carved by the Virgin River. In springtime, when snowmelt rushes down from the nearby mountains, the river can be extremely dangerous, and flash floods are such a common occurrence that The Narrows and other trails which follow the river are closed off during flood season.

On the day we visited, however, the river looked safe and tranquil, and we saw several people wearing rubber waders and carrying heavy wooden walking sticks, ready to begin their journey down The Narrows.

We took a walk down the Riverside Walk, a flat trail following the river to the beginning of the Narrows Trail.

Court of the Patriarchs

The Three Patriarchs, a trio of towering sandstone monoliths were named by Methodist minister Frederick Fisher after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob respectively.

Jacob Peak, however, sits slightly behind the more prominent Mount Moroni (named for the angel Moroni, who, in Mormon theology, presented Joseph Smith with the golden plates from which he translated and published the Book of Mormon), and is less visible.

Tracks on the sandy ground indicated that this was a popular equestrian trail, although we didn't see any horses when we were there. In fact, this was the first time we were able to get away from the crowds, and the first time that I felt we could really enjoy the peace and natural beauty of the park.

The one thing that really struck me on our journey through Utah is how, despite their relative physical proximity, each park is so vastly different from the next. The landscape and biology at Zion are totally unique amongst the Mighty Five, and even the colors of the rock are different at each park.

Human History Museum

Zion wasn't always named so. In 1909, President Taft crated the Mukuntuweap National Monument. When it was elevated to become a national park in 1918, however, the director of the National Park Service thought that an indigenous name might put Americans off from visiting and renamed it "Zion" in reference to the term used for the area by early Mormon pioneers.

Unfortunately, due to the overcrowding, traffic, late start, and rushed visit, I didn't end up with a very good impression of Zion. It's a shame, because I know it's one of the country's most beautiful parks and super popular for a reason. I'd like to give it its fair dues sometime now that I know a little better about how to visit it and when I have more time to explore.

There are a few big adventures in the park as well which would be away from most of the crowds. The Angel's Landing trek looks a bit too dangerous for a clumsy guy like me, but hiking down The Narrows, a stretch of river between two tall rocky cliffs, might be doable. I'll add it to my adventure bucket list for someday in the future when I will give Zion a second chance.

The First Snow

The last time I saw snow (save for a little bit on the ground in west Texas) was the winter of 2012. It was the winter before I moved to Thailand, and at the time I would have had no idea that I wouldn't see snow again for more than a decade.

Every time I've visited home since, it's either been springtime (when I was working at the school my term holiday fell during the month of April), the summer, or on particularly warm and snowless Texas winters.

I was very excited that we found ourselves driving past a pristine winter wonderland as we left Cannonville on our way towards beautiful, beautiful Zion. It's just a light dusting by Utah standards, but when you grew up in Texas and currently live in the tropics, any small amount of snow is a wonderous sight to see.

We stopped at a pull-off to take a picture. It was in the upper 20s°F, the coldest it had been so far, and small, delicate snowflakes were still falling from the foggy white sky.

We drove through an arch which spanned the road and descended down the mountain towards Zion National Park. It was our final day of hiking and Zion was to be the final of Utah's Mighty Five. It was one of the two parks in the state, alongside Arches, that I had most been looking forward to.

However, things weren't going to go as smoothly as we had hoped... more on that later.

Desert Glamping

The most unique lodgings we stayed at in Utah was in Cannonville, Utah, just a short drive outside of Bryce Canyon National Park.

Bryce Glamp and Camp is a glamping resort where guests sleep inside geodesic domes. While it may look like a tent from the outside, staying here is anything but roughing it.

Each dome had a kitchenette, television, electric fireplace, air-conditioning, a full bathroom, and a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape.

This is the second time I've been "glamping" (the first was last year in Kanchanaburi, Thailand), and while I love camping, sometimes it's nice to be able to have a hot shower and comfy bed at the same time as enjoying the great outdoors.

We arrived in late afternoon and had plenty of time to enjoy the camp. Mom, Dad, and I had all brought our binoculars, so we sat out on the patio of one of the tents and had a beer while we scouted for birds in the scrubby desert brush.

It's not exactly the right time of year for birding in Utah, but I was able to add a few new species to my life list (I'm up to 175 now, which was my goal by the end of the year).

The domes each had a small kitchenette and an outdoor propane grill. We had stopped in town on the way to the glamping site to pick up something to make for dinner. Dad grilled some hot dogs outside, I heated up a can of beans on the stove, and Mom prepared a mixed salad bag.

It was a simple meal, but it was actually one of my favorite dinners on the trip because it was fun to make it ourselves. Even though we were in a luxurious accommodation, it felt like we were camping.

It rained all night, and the sound of the heavy raindrops hitting the canvas dome lulled me to sleep. The next morning, something had changed. Looking out to the mountains in the distance, I could see a bit of white capping them. 

It looks as if Utah has gotten its first snow of the year, and we were going to be driving through it on our way to Zion National Park, the final of Utah's "Mighty Five".

Bryce Canyon

We got a leisurely start the next morning, awaking in the century-old farmhouse rooms we had rented for the night. The most fun part of a bed and breakfast, of course, is the breakfast, so we poured ourselves some coffee and sat down at a table in the big dining room while our host prepared our meal and regaled us of with the sort of local gossip that you can only hear in a small town (apparently a neighbor's bull had been destroying local gardens again and people are mad about it).

Breakfast was eggs, fried bacon, fresh fruit, yogurt with jam, fresh juice, hot coffee, and a stack of pancakes served with creamy butter, orange jam, and homemade buttermilk syrup. 

This was the best breakfast on our entire trip, and it sure beat eating protein bars and coffee in the car.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

To get to Bryce Canyon, we first had to pass through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The national monument, established in 1996, is the first to be managed directly by the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park Service. At 1.8 million acres of land, the monument is among the most remote land in the country and was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.

We stopped in at the visitor's center for a national park passport stamp and spent a few minutes admiring the views. The monument is beautiful, and I'd love to come back to visit it sometime, but I think it's pretty wild. As we were getting our stamps, I overheard a ranger giving very emphatic warnings to a pair of campers about the dangers of the weather at the park.

Rainbow Point

We drove to the far end of the park, climbing from 4000 feet above sea level at the visitor's center to over 9000 feet at Rainbow Point! The altitude hadn't really bothered me much in Salt Lake City or at the other parks, but I did feel a little bit out of breath when hiking up the hills at the highest part of the park. I live at sea level, so any sort of altitude change is really different from what I'm used to.

I'm not sure if it was serendipity that brought us an actual rainbow at Rainbow Point, or if it's named that because rainbows are a common sight there. Either way, it was a pretty weird experience to be standing on a cliff high up above the valley and looking down on the rainbow below us! I don't think I've ever been above a rainbow looking down before.

Over 20 million years (give or take a few), tectonic uplift has raised Rainbow Point above its surroundings. The air was cold here, and the landscape was surprisingly lush.

In contrast to the rocky desert landscape we had spent the past several days in, we found ourselves in a verdant pine forest that reminded me of Colorado.

Yovimpa Point

From Rainbow Point we decided to take the easy and beautiful Bristlecone Trail to the nearby Yovimpa Point. The trail is a gentle 1-mile loop meandering through the high-altitude temperate forest.

Yovimpa Point is the windiest part of the park, and when we reached it, we were buffeted by the strong winds blowing in over the valley below. It was cold, and as we stood at the overlook, the sky began growing darker and darker with threatening rainclouds.

It was the coldest we've been on our trip in Utah so far, and as we walked back along the Bristlecone Loop, it began to rain. Though the temperature was still about ten degrees above freezing (F), I'm pretty sure that it wasn't just water falling from the sky. It definitely felt and sounded like sleet. I'm still holding out for snow! I haven't really gotten to see snow at all since I moved to Thailand over a decade ago.

Ponderosa Canyon

Ponderosa Canyon is named for the towering Ponderosa pines which cover the valley floor. These mammoth trees can be 5 feet in diameter and more than 150 feet tall! Of course, other types of trees grow here as well, including many different types of spruce and fir.  

The canyon views are stunning and give a different perspective of the surrounding landscape.

The most iconic feature at this part of the scenic drive is the Natural Bridge, an arch or "window" created not by water and wind erosion, but rather through thousands of years of ice freezing and thawing in cracks in the stone.

Someday, the arch will inevitably collapse, leaving two newborn hoodoos in its place.

Farview Point

Farview Point definitely lives up to its name. On a clear day, you can see the Navajo Mountain, which is located on the Arizona border 90 miles away! Bryce Canyon is known for its extremely clear air quality and is usually famous for its great visibility. It's also an International Dark Sky Park, and people flock from all around to stargaze.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't exactly clear on the day we visited, but the clouds, mist, fog, and rain made for some really interesting views, and I think the slightly gloomy weather added atmosphere to the landscape.

The Silent City

From the viewpoint at Bryce Overlook, you can gaze down into the valley below to see countless hoodoos, weird geological spires of stone pointing towards the heavens.

Hoodoos, also known as "fairy chimneys", are formed by erosion. Typically, they consist of soft rock capped by harder rock which protects the body of the hoodoos from the elements.

The Silent City is a mythological graveyard of sorts. An ancient and sacred oral tradition of the local indigenous people states that the hoodoos are ancient beings who were cursed to transform into stone by the coyote (a sort of trickster god in many indigenous American stories) as a punishment for their bad deeds. Today, these spires of stone stand silently along the canyon, staring back at the visitors who travel from all around the world to see them every year.

Bryce Canyon was awesome! It's one of the highlights of the trip so far. It's the perfect balance of accessible, well-developed, and impressive. While I suppose it can get busy at times (there's a shuttle service, which usually run at the country's busiest parks such as the Grand Canyon), it didn't feel overcrowded at all. The landscape, with cold, windy pine forests, sprawling canyons, and otherworldly hoodoos was incredibly diverse and stunning, and I'd come back here again in a heartbeat.

Tomorrow, we'll be visiting somewhere I've wanted to visit for years: Zion National Park. But first, we've got a pretty cool overnight glamping experience to look forward to.