Goblin Valley State Park, Capitol Reef NP, Grand Staircase Escalante and Bryce Canyon NP, Utah

March  2015
We left Linda's place in Grand Junction reasonably early as we knew that even though we were only travelling a few 100 kms it would take us all day! John suggested we visit Goblin Valley State Park. Its eminent feature is its thousands of hoodoos and hoodoo rocks, referred to locally as “goblins”,which are formations of mushroom-shaped rock pinnacles, some as high as several meters. The distinct shape of these rocks comes from an erosion-resistant layer of rock atop softer sandstone.

We spent a good couple of hours here and it was such a surreal landscape....we loved it!

Unfortunately I do remember seeing Goblin Valley SP in the news a few years ago, when a group of men, who also happened to be be Scout leaders, toppled one of the "goblins" over and put the footage on youtube.  It's quite unbelievable when you see the footage and for these guys to think it was OK and then to share it with the rest of the world.
The drive to Capitol Reef NP was spectacular.  There was still enough snow around for it to look amazing, and the Kimberley/Pilbara colours with the snow was breathtaking!

We visited the NP over 2 days and during the second day walked through a gorge/canyon, which we had to ourselves.  It was fantastic. Huge sheer rock walls reaching all the way up to the blue Utah skies, and the sound of the crunching snow at our feet.  Loved it!

The drive throughout the NP was miles of gorgeousness....and hardly another person in sight.

We spent the night in Torrey at a nice hotel and went out for dinner that night.  When we are travelling for so long, it is unaffordable to go to restaurants every night...as there is the cost of the meal, tax and a tip, which all adds up, so the rare times we do go out is a treat.  The lady at the hotel recommended a little cafe to us so we went there.  The lady who served us was incredibly rude (something you rarely encounter in the US), took our order and 15 mins later, threw a paper plate with Stu's dinner on it onto the table and said to me, "we don't have any nachos left, what else do you want?" I replied with, "well I can't remember what else was on the menu", so she eventually came back with a menu for me (she was annoyed that I'd asked for the menu again), and I decided that it wasn't worth the wait for her to come back, take my order, and have the meal cooked, so instead shared Stuart's meal with him.  It was very disappointing and in hindsight, we shouldn't have given a tip!  But I must reiterate this kind of rudeness is very unusual in our US travels.
The next day we took Hwy 12 Scenic Byway, as recommended by John.  WOW!

Again, we virtually had the road to ourselves and it was stunning.  Amazing views overlooking Capitol Reef where we had just been, the whitest snow, blue skies and gorgeous aspen.

We drove over Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument...another amazing drive over the ridge of mountains, with more outstanding views.

When I knew I was coming back to the US, there were two main places I wanted to see...Bryce Canyon NP and Zion NP, both in Utah.  So it turned out well that we were driving past Bryce Canyon NP around sunset, and we only had about a further 40 minute drive to our accommodation, so decided to check it out. We were there for probably about 1 hr and in that time took over 300 photos.  It was such a sight, like nothing I had ever seen before.  So we had to cull a lot of photos and here are a few we kept.

Again we were so lucky to nearly have the place to ourselves and to see it with snow was very fortunate.  We drove to Panguitch, where we had booked a hotel for the night...a cheap hotel. We were the only ones in the hotel for the night and  the only way you could get hold of the owners was to ring a number that was taped to the office door and if you were lucky, they might answer! Yep a bit of a dodgy place, where it took ages for the room to warm up (it was bloody freezing), the "free wifi" was free of any wifi and there were only 3 pillows on the bed....which is of significance as it meant Stu had to use his blue snow jacket to plump up his pillow, by inserting it into the pillow case...a trick he learned while in London, Ontario back in 2013...and a trick he didn't learn from as we found out a few days later!!