The Scenery Never Stops

Imagine my surprise when I peeked out of our cheap motel this morning and saw an inch of snow on everything! It was pretty cold too, but it was sunny at least. The sun added a nice touch to everything that had a dusting of snow on it. By the time we left an hour later the snow was starting to slide off. It never did really warm up too much all day, but it sure was sunny.

We just settled down for the night here just outside of the little town of Torrey, Utah in a really nice Days Inn. As a matter of fact, it's one of the better places I've ever stayed and it was only $49.50 a night. Things like this sure vary here and there don't they? In some places you can't find anything under a hundred bucks, and when you do it's usually so-so or worse.

We didn't cover a whole lot of ground today, but that was mostly because we kept stopping for pictures. I took 312 pictures today, and as per most of the time we take pictures, I'll probably only keep about 25% of em. There are some of them that are drop-dead gorgeous, and some of them are have lighting issues. Most of the time it's a matter of which side of us the sun is on. My best pictures today probably came from our little detour down to Natural Bridges Park. The third of the three natural bridges we saw was the best. We ended up taking a trail down to the bottom of the bridge and seeing the Owachomo from below. Here's a example (click for bigger pictures):


We spent a lot of time today stopping to take pictures. Lucky for us the roads were practically empty, so we could jam on the brakes and dive for the shoulder of the road with little or no warning when a good photo op presented itself. We could even stop right in the middle of the road and snap off a couple shots if we wanted to. With highways like this, all you have to do is keep an eye on your rear view mirror every now and then. There just wasn't any traffic out there to speak of. Here's what many of today's roads looked like:


We hoped to make it a little farther today, but had a slight change of plans after talking to someone else we met while stopping to take pictures. They told us that we should stay in Torrey tonight and do the road to Escalante in the morning sun hours. Even though we thought we had seen some of the most beautiful scenery on earth, they said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." We're taking their advice and hope to see some really nice stuff tomorrow. The weather said it should be about 20 degrees when we get up in the morning (high of 45) but clear and/sunny all day.

One of the little scenic roads we turned onto right before stopping here tonight took us into a little nature preserve of sorts, and there were little mule deer running all over. We sat and got picture after picture of them, and only a few feet away. They apparently could care less about humans.

We may or may not be hitting any more natural parks on the way out of Utah, and that choice is just based on time. I think we'd both like to shoot for her sister's house in California tomorrow night. We'll see.

This trip has been a total blast and we are traveling very well together. I love it!