Kanab, November 20

Our road trip/hiking adventure began Nov. 19 in Vegas, and we would return here 10 days later.

My friend and I left at about 7 p.m. for Kanab, Utah, with a rental all-wheel drive vehicle and enough water and sundries to fill our bellies for the many days of hiking ahead. The plan was to secure hiking passes to this spectacular sedimentary rock formation known as The Wave. As the park ranger told me, we had to be present at the ranger station in Kanab at about 8:45 a.m. to participate in a lottery that would hand out 10 walk-in passes to hikers. She said that about 20 to 30 hikers were present each day, so I figured that staying in Kanab for a couple of days would increase our odds of winning passes for the hike if we didn't get any on the first try.

We arrived at our hotel in Kanab at about 11 p.m. (There was a restaurant stop about 50 miles north of Vegas for dishes of fried catfish [hers] and chicken-fried steak [mine]. And the moonlight formed silhouettes of huge mountains in Arizona that we would get to see in daylight on our return trip to Vegas.)

At 8:15 a.m. the next day, I asked the woman at the counter about the distance from the hotel to the ranger station. She said it wasn't far but remarked that she thought the ranger station was closed on weekends (a statement that immediately perked up my ears.) We went to the station, and lo and behold, it was closed on weekends! Thinking it was a mistake we headed back to the hotel and returned at 9 a.m. to see if they were really closed. Upon the return, a ranger passed by the office and informed us that the tickets for The Wave, in the North Coyote Buttes were handed out on Fridays for hikes on Saturdays and Sundays. So, the next chance to bid would be on Monday. So much for my planning. But she let us inside the station and said that there were alternative hikes nearby. She pointed out the petroglyphs by the Coral Sands and a set of fossilized dinosaur tracks not far from Kanab. So, we took her advice and planned for one of those trips on the 21st.

But our first destination was Bryce Canyon and hike. We left Kanab immediately after meeting with the ranger, and it was a good 70-minute drive to Bryce. My friend remarked on the drive northward how the scenery reminded her of home in Australia, with the barren red rock formations and desert plants. All that was missing was a kangaroo.