Travel To Cedar City

On our last day at Grand Canyon, we packed up and headed to Cedar City, Utah. The quickest way to get there was to head back up to the Canyon, and then turn East and travel 6 hours around the canyon, finally turning north to our destination.

Before doing that however, we had time for one more (a couple really) stops at the Canyon, one of which was the Grandview overlook. Becky, Corey and I went down a path to pick up some really wonderful pictures of the eastern edge of the canyon. No, Mom, it wasn't that dangerous... really!

We left the Canyon area, vaguely following the Colorado river. The ravines grew shallower, but somehow more facinating, possibly because they were become more human-scale.

Soon, we were traveling through Navajo and Hopi Native American lands. The trees were quickly replaced with dry scrub, and then more painted desert. The weather was cool, but the dryness and barreness of this land rivals anything we've seen so far. And it is a vast area. In fact, it was daunting to think of the vehicle breaking down anywhere along this trip. No bars on the cell phone, and little traffic.

Halfway through the trip, we came to and crossed the Navajo Bridge.

We stopped for a break here. According to the history at the visitor center, when this bridge was built in 1928, it became the first bridge within 600 miles. Before, they had only a ferry run by a Mormon, his two wives, and 20 children!

On the whole, the first half of the trip was punctuated by towns in some cases composed of 1 gas station, spaced hours apart. No grocery stores. No restaurants. Just a 2-lane, 65 mile-an-hour (108 kph) highway, incredibly dry scrub. After the bridge, the land grew even more arid and desolate. Every now and then we would come across a community of 10 or so identical houses and shanties along the road selling local jewelry and pottery. The flat land is similar to the panhandle of Texas, but here, nothing is cultivated. There are infrequent cows and horses.

But now, we are being paced by the Vermilion hills. The portion we saw started at the Navajo bridge and they go on for miles. The color is amazingly red. (Hence the name, I'm sure)


Eventually, after several hours, we climbed out of the flatlands. Looking back, you can see the road we traveled in the middle distance. The Navajo bridge is somewhere behind that prominence in the middle distance.

After crossing another plateau, we are greeted with more cliffs, but these are multicolored. The view is spectacular (and we have trees near us again. Us poor mid-westerners are just not comfortable without them!)

Finally, we reach US route 15, 75-mile-per-hour speed limits, and eventually Cedar City. Civilization. Hooray! And a bed! Tomorrow, Zion. The day after that Bryce Canyon. More rocks? Just another hole in the ground? Tune in tomorrow (I hope). Same bat-time. Same bat-channel.

P.S. By the by, if you haven't noticed, I'm a little behind. We've already been to Zion and Bryce, but I do want to fill you in. Have patience, gentle reader, for tomorrow we travel again! To Moab we go.