Day 30: Bryce Canyon & Moab, UT

We awoke feeling a little better about the day before. We needed to do laundry so while we did we made PBJs for lunch and packed up. We finally got away just after 11am and headed towards Bryce Canyon, just down the road. We had missed the beautiful scenery on the way in because it was dark, but it was really beautiful out that way. We stopped at a gas station before the park and got gas and some chips & sodas for lunch. We went into the park (saving $10 with our parks card!) where the ranger gave us the tip of going all the way to the end and working our way back. We took his advice. We made it to the endpoint and it was awesome. Some guy offered to take our picture and we started talking to him and his buddy who were both on bikes. They were from Washington and we had a good time chatting about roads, the weather, the Vegas incident... It was a nice relief from the sour experience the day before.

The canyon isn't really a canyon but a set of naturally occurring amphitheaters.

  

 

We went down the mountain and stopped at several viewpoints. This was an arch:

 

 At the last viewpoint we met a couple from Naperville who took our picture. We had a nice conversation with them too. 

 We hit the road again, stopping not too much long after in construction and then to eat our picnic lunch. We continued on and watched as we approached inevitable rain. But we saw a double rainbow which was pretty neat:

We eventually hit rain. This was the first time we needed rainsuits and the first day we didn't have them. We actually got a good laugh out of that piece of irony. We stopped at a gas station to fill  up and beat the rain. The lady at the counter was not very nice in telling me the closest Wal-Mart  (to get rainsuits) was 30 miles in the opposite direction. She really thought we could maybe find rainsuits at the local hardware store. I wouldn't fault her if she hadn't been so rude...but I digress. We put on sweatshirts and hunkered down as we headed into the rain.

It was chilly but thankfully not very heavy and short-lived so we dried out pretty quickly. We were on I-70 and drove through some fantastic scenery. I took a ton of pictures to show my teachers. The rock layers and formations were just beautiful. It eventually got pretty warm again and that coupled with the scenery made the whole rain thing not a big deal. We stopped for a break at a gas station and reserved a campsite in Moab. Coming into Moab the sun was just setting and the moon was rising:

It was so cool with the red rock mountains and canyons and the moon. We made it to our site and set up camp. I made a work call and we eventually headed out to dinner. There wasn't much open at 9pm but we decided on a microbrewery (Moab Brewery) and had a really great dinner of BBQ chicken and chicken burrito and enjoyed a few of their "fine craftsmanship." We got gelato on the way out before making it back and heading off to bed.

Today we traveled 350.7 miles for a total of 8650.9 miles across America.