Hoodoo You Love 06/05/20

Ruby’s Inn RV Park, Bryce, Utah

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.  ~ Proverbs 25:20

I have a bit of history to start your day!  It concerns where we’re parked.  Before I get into their history though, you should know that this place encompasses a whole lot more than just an inn and campground.  They have their hands in a dinner show, fast food joint, a buffet (all different buildings), an art gallery, retail shops, old west photos, ice skating and sleigh rides in the winter, trail rides, ATV and mountain bike rentals, and a rodeo!  I was especially excited, and then disappointed to learn about the almost daily rodeo (W-Sat), because attending one was on my very short bucket list for this trip.  But thanks to the coronavirus invasion, there are no rodeos.  ☹

According to the newspaper Ruby’s makes available to their guests (with all those activities and extensive history included, it’s no wonder it’s 20 pages long!), the following is how it all began.  The paper goes on through time, to the present, but I’m not doing that to you.  😊

Reuben Syrett – known by most folks as “Ruby” – and his wife, Minnie, both grew up in the Panguitch area in the late 1800s.  they were married in 1905, and always dreamt of having a ranch of their own.  In 1916, their dream came true!

Taking their 6-week-old daughter Armeda and 8-year-old son Carl, they loaded their wagon and buggy and headed for the land they bought on the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau.  Roads back then were just trails, and it took them two days to travel those 25 miles, struggling through a streambed to the top of Red Canyon on the first day.  But the effort was worth it – just look around you today!

Just six weeks after they arrived at their new ranch, something very exciting happened.  Like many of the settlers on the plateau, Ruby and Minnie were unaware that the beauty of Bryce Canyon was only a few miles from their homestead!  A visitor from the nearby town of Tropic stopped by and asked them if they had ever seen Bryce.  Ruby replied, “No, what is it?”  The neighbor said, “Just a hole in the ground, but you should see it.”  So one Sunday afternoon Ruby and Minnie climbed into their buggy and went to see this “hole in the ground.”

They stood speechless!  The coloring, the rock formations; they had never seen anything like it!  What a surprise that hole turned out to be!  Ruby and Minnie thought everyone should see it, they took their friends there and told everyone they met about Bryce Canyon.

And so began their new venture.  Ruby and Minnie hosted folks who came to see Bryce Canyon, giving them a place to stay and food to eat.

In 1919, they pitched a tent at the rim of the canyon to accommodate visitors, and the next year they built a lodge near Sunset Point and called it Tourist Rest.  Folks carved their names in the heavy wooden doors to the lodge, and the doors became a guest register.  They added several tent cabins and an open-air dance pavilion where they’d have dances and celebrations.  They had fun!  And oh, how they loved that place!

The Union Pacific Railroad Company was developing tourism around national parks and monuments at that time, and they wanted to develop the land where Tourist Rest stood.  Since Ruby and Minnie only had a verbal agreement with the State of Utah – which owned the land at the time – they had to sell Tourist Rest to Union Pacific, and they moved back to their ranch, where they tended their livestock and built an inn.  In 1923, Bryce Canyon became a National Monument, and the following year, Ruby and Minnie built their inn.  Later in the 1920s, Ruby became the postmaster for the inn and provided mail service for their guests.

By the 1930s, the guests were asking for additional culture and the guided trail rides began.

On June 7, 1924, Congress passed a bill to establish Utah National Park, when all land within the national monument would become the property of the United States. The land was acquired and the name was restored to Bryce Canyon. On February 25, 1928, Bryce Canyon officially became a National Park under President Calvin Coolidge.

I’ve mentioned before how majestic Zion National Park is, but Bryce has its own unimaginable unique quality.  And especially so, once you get down into the canyon.  It feels almost magical!  I’m not sure you’ll be able to tell that from the pictures, but when you’re there?  No question.  Magical!

There are 12 individual hikes available in the Park.  In addition, there are several that can be combined to make for longer hikes.  The Park provides a nice hiking guide that tells you the name of the trail, the distance, the elevation gain, and a brief description of what you’d be getting into/seeing.  Last night, we looked them all over and marked those that sounded of interest to us. Most had stars beside them.  😊  So we looked them over more closely, Blaine did his research thing, and we made the decision to begin with the Queen’s Garden/Navajo Loop combo.  It sounds like a lot, but it’s only a total of 2.9 miles.  Piece of cake for us!

And then there’s the fact that when we were here on vacation all those years ago, we remembered certain aspects of our walks here.  Like the fact that we watched the sun rise over the hoodoos, as we stood in the freezing cold morning air, but weren’t overly impressed by it.  (Maybe it was a cloudy morning?  Maybe we were just too cold to appreciate it?)  And we remembered walking along what we now recall was the Queen’s Garden Trail, and hunting for the ‘named’ hoodoos – – like ‘the temple’, ‘the snow people’, ‘the silent village’, etc.  We thought we remembered signage pointing these things out, but we only came across one today, so either the signs were removed for some reason since we were here, or we had a descriptive map with us. 

Anyway, I seem to be rambling, so on with our day. There are a lot of pictures to enjoy so we best get started!

We began our 357-foot descent down into what they call the Bryce Amphitheater along the Queen’s Garden Trail.  Enjoy the hike!  We certainly did!  You can’t help but love these hoodoos!

And then, there she was!  Just exactly as we remembered her!  Queen Victoria herself!  All aglow in this morning’s brilliant sunlight!  Guess erosion doesn’t happen fast around here.  She hadn’t changed a bit in seven years.  😊

On to the Navajo Loop part of our journey.

Because we began with the Queen’s first, we now had a decision to make.  We would have to complete one side of the Navajo Loop twice or skip one side, because Queen’s intersects in the middle of the Navajo.  Plus, we’re now at the bottom of the canyon, and the only way out is up.

Have you ever hiked at 8,000’?  Today found us la-dee-dahing along on the Queen’s Garden Trail, slowly wending our way down to the canyon floor and feeling just hunky-dory . . .

• 

• 

until . . .

. . . the Navajo Loop Trail required us to go uphill. 

We’ve never felt so old and out of shape!  We were sucking in great gulps of dust-saturated air, as we tried to inhale as much oxygen into our lungs as possible, but it seemed like it was never quite enough.  We were winded and had to stop every fifty yards (or less!) to catch our breath – and glad to see those half our age experiencing the same difficulty.  Once we rested, our heartrate slowed and our breathing returned to normal, until we moved on.  This went on until we reached the top.  Elevation matters!

And then the decision had to be made – do we go back down the other side of the loop, knowing full well what lies ahead for us?  Or do we skip it?  We decided to go for it.  After all, it didn’t kill us, and we recovered quickly.

So after a quick stop at the Jeep to make a wardrobe change – – you’ll see me in at least three different outfits today 😊 – – we began the other side of Navajo.

And into the depths of the canyon we went.  It wasn’t long before we realized that the way we went up before would be MUCH easier than the way we went down this time.  This side seemed much steeper and had loads of skinny switchbacks.  Not as many or as narrow as the Angel’s Landings ones, but still more than we wanted.  Also, the views weren’t as nice for when you want to stop and wait for your breath to catch up to you.

Having all these short trails and overlooks along the road in this Park, makes for a full day of jumping from one terrific sight to another.  We left the amphitheater to drive to the end of the Park’s road – a distance of roughly 15 miles from our current location, once again starting at the end and working our way back.  If you do that, all the viewing points are on your right, so it’s easy in and easy out.  😊

While we were out at the end (Rainbow/Yovimpa Points), we took on the one-mile Bristlecone Loop Trail.  This trail takes you through some of the Park’s bristlecone pine trees – some more than 1,000 years old!  And you’d think something like that would be huge, but they’re not.  Their growth is stunted by the weather here. 

Here’s some information on these remarkable trees:

Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva and Pinus aristata) are among the oldest living organisms on earth. Bristlecones are only found in six states, Utah included. The oldest LIVING tree is called “Methuselah” and is 4,765 years old. This tree is nearly 1,000 years older than any other bristlecone alive today. It lives in a secret location in the White Mountain range of eastern California. The oldest known tree named “Prometheus” was cut down in 1964 by a doctoral student. He was studying climate change as expressed in receding glaciers whose historic size could be measured by influence on the growth rings of nearby ancient bristlecones. This happened in what is now known as Great Basin National Park. The tree was later confirmed to be almost 4,900 years old.

Bristlecones have 5 needles per fascicle, and can grow to be 40-60 feet in height (under most favorable conditions.) Often they will die in portions. As the roots become exposed they will dry out and die. The tree directly connected above those roots will eventually die as well. The remainder of the tree will continue to live. This is among the causes that create the twisted tortured look of the trees. It also may prompt the question “why do they take so long to die?” as opposed to “why do they live so long?”

The tree is used heavily in the science of dendrochronology, where tree rings of known ages are compared against environmental conditions and a history of previous environmental conditions is recorded. Because the trees are thousands of years old, we can understand what the environment was like thousands of years ago, just by comparing the tree rings.

The tree is also noteworthy because the needles stay on the limb for over 40 years, unlike most other pines, which shed their needles every few years. This is important, because the tree can go through periods when it does not grow at all. At such high elevations (8,000-11,000 ft), there are years when the environment does not thaw. This prevents the tree from putting on a new year’s growth (both foliage and cambium rings.) By keeping its needles longer, the tree doesn’t lose all of its foliage without having the opportunity to grow new needles. It also means that a tree with 900 obvious rings may be significantly older.

Great longevity is also insured by highly resinous wood which helps prevent the trees from desiccating in the hot, dry temperatures. This resin also helps shield the bristlecones from insects and harmful bacteria that prey upon many other, more fragile trees.

The oldest bristlecone is found at Yovimpa Point on the Bristlecone Loop Trail, and is estimated at over 1,600 years old–a mere youngster!

And believe it or not, from where we stood, we could actually see Navajo Mountain!  Do you remember that mountain from our time around Lake Powell?  The big rounded mound we could see from just about everywhere?

Over to Rainbow Point. It’s actually just across from this one.

By the time we finished looking around here, it was time for lunch. There was only one spot with a view and shade – – inside a shelter.

Time to head back down the mountain and stop at those viewpoints I mentioned. Cool beans!

That’s it for today.  Tomorrow, we’ll take on some different trails.

Oh.  Wait.  Just one more thing.

Remember the flowers I bought myself for Mother’s Day?  Well, they’re gone now.  I killed the flytrap within the first week.  The other one struggled to stay alive, but just couldn’t survive.  So today, I had to get rid of it.  ☹  Someday, I’m gonna find a flowering houseplant that I can manage to keep alive. . . I hope.