Out West. Sunday. 6/27/2010.

For the record, 3am is entirely too early for any sane being to awaken at. Especially if this being did not get to bed until 1am in the first place. Trust me when I say that 2 hours of sleep is never a good thing. Regardless, I dragged myself out of bed in time to catch the flight to Charlotte, the first leg of my much anticipated trip out west. Fortunately there were no last minute scrambles to catch a plane that by all odds I should have missed which is sadly more often than not a habit I seem to have developed. Anyways the trip went as follows, RDU to Charlotte, then Charlotte to Vegas. Neither of which were too bad of flights minus the snorer I got stuck next to on the way to Charlotte. Most of the flights were spent revisiting old Seinfeld episodes on my iPad or burying my face in books. Once we landed in Vegas the original plan was to grab a bite to eat before we hit the road to Utah, however a last minute change in plans left us with the plan to grab something on the road on our way to Springdale, Utah. Ha, well apparently there is hardly much of anything on the way. Welcome to the west I suppose. Long, straight-shot roads to nowhere with civilization few and far between. It wasn't long before hunger began to gnaw at peoples nerves in the car. Thankfully we found a place before animalistic instincts kicked in and we resorted to more drastic measures to feed ourselves. Kidding, sort of. Eventually we arrived in the small town Of Springdale, Utah, population 457. The "Gateway Town" to Zion National Park. It's a cute little town that despite first and foremost being a tourist attraction of sorts or merely stepping stone to Zion, it has a certain quaintness or homeyness about it. Not to mention the fact that it's nestled between the regal dusty brown splashed with rusted orange rock columns of Zion National Park just down the small stretch of road. I love everything about this place, the town, the friendly faces, the rocky terrain, the tall cliffs of vibrantly rusted sandstone and limestone, the cluttered tourist stores, the tables of overflowing gemstones for sale, I even love the heat here. Yes, it's pretty hot here, most always over 100F this time of year I hear, however this heat is completely different from the humid heat of home. The warmth seems to seep into your flesh and spread it's way out to heat all surfaces of your skin. It's not thick like at home, it doesn't smother. It permeates. Once unpacked we drove through Zion to briefly take in the scenery there. I've always been a rock person, but those weren't just rocks. They have a certain ferocity to them, a magnificence to them. I have never seen anything like this terrain before. Words don't do Zion's beauty justice. After driving through Zion, we headed about an hour or so out to hike around Bryce Canyon National Park. There we took our time hiking about 3 miles around Queensgarden and Navajo loop. The rock columns were a lot different from Zion, not as massive but pretty impressive in their own way. They were called hoodoos and were scattered everywhere. When viewed from the high up overlook at the end stretch of the trail they were masses together on an impressive display as far as the eye could see. It was like seeing them in a whole new light when looked at from above rather than intertwined within them on the ground. Both perspectives as amazing, just different. By the time we drove back to Springdale, stopping off for dinner on the way, it was more than a little late. We all crashed from exhaustion to get some sleep before the long day of hiking that awaits us tomorrow.