Final day in Bryce

Tuesday, 8/28

First thing this morning we picked up Tom and Bonnie at their nearby RV and began the Fairyland Loop walk.   Which sounds benign, but it's not.  It really does look like a fairyland of castles and towers--all in orange and white, as usual--but it involves a lot of climbing down and up and down and up again over a total of 800 feet of elevation change.  And it's 8 miles long.

I had to push hard to  keep up with Bonnie and Tom (and Nils) who are all in much better condition than I am......but I was the persistent caboose and didn't have to be left behind after all.

Tom and Bonnie, the speedy ones, with Lisa (the caboose)

Doesn't this look like an ancient Egyptian statue of a cat?!

Window on the left, bridge (crumbling!) on the right

My obsession with the twisty trees continues....aren't they amazing?!

PHOTO 06

More enchanting sights

Yay!  In celebration, we had a little party with Tom and Bonnie and recharged our batteries with crackers and cheese and peanut butter and chips and guacamole and lemonade. When we were out buying party food, we went to the ranger's desk to get our "I hiked the Hoodoos" buttons.  You have to show proof of having done the Fairyland hike, so we showed them this:

There's Lisa's sideways face by the official medallion--see, it says "I hiked the Hoodoos" along the bottom edge

But the very young ranger said that one also had to hike 4 miles, that the medallion we photographed was at the 3.4/4/6 mile mark depending on which way you hiked the loop.  Hmm.  Nils showed him our other Fairyland pictures as proof and he finally gave us our hard-earned badges.  Later on, we talked to some older rangers and told them this story.  They said, "I bet it was Sean.  He's kind of a Nazi about giving out those badges."  Anyway, we did the climbing and we earned our reward, that's for sure.    It felt good to sit around for a few hours after all that strenuous climbing.   Our solar panel is slowly charging up our ailing RV batteries which are still a source of aggravation.  We can keep the frig running and operate the pullout/jack/stabilizers, but that's about it (no water pump, no lights).  We've been going to the faucet close by to fill up our gallon jugs, and it's really not such a hardship.  I can wash myself (including hair) AND the dirty clothes from the day in just 1-1/2 gallons of water.

I was so beat after our big long walk that I fell into bed by 7:30pm and slept for 10 hours straight.