2013/07/09 – Tuesday – Vacation - Day 19 - Hikes and Exploring

After getting up, we needed a few items from the store, so a shopping we went.

Once we got everything gathered up, we headed out for our first hike of the day.  Once we determined which one to do, we headed that way to Mossy Cave Trail hike.  This canyon had some water running in it.  Once at the location of the two items, we explored around the waterfall and then over to the “Cave”, which was an overhang with water trickling under through the moss.  That hike was about 1 mile round trip and we spent about 30 minutes there.

Next hike was at the far Southern tip of the park, called Bristlecone Loop Trail.  We finally got there and started our hike.  It is on the rim of the area.  The hike was about 1.1 miles round trip and we spent about 45 minutes exploring the area.

We returned to the RV for lunch and we wanted to make sure Turquoise was ok, and he was.

The last hike of the day for us was going to be moderate.  We headed back into the park and started the Navajo Loop Trail.  This trail starts at the top of the rim and head downhill. The view going down and going up are really cool with high cliff walls and very tall trees growing between very tight canyons.  The climb up was steep with a lot of switchbacks and we had to go through a small “tunnel” more like an arch along the route.  The hike was about 2.2 miles and it took us about 1.5 hours.

Now that everybody was tired, we still haven’t done all the viewing areas on long the route, so we returned to the southern end and proceeded to stop at all the viewing areas all the way back to the main entrance. 

We stopped at the visitor center so Amanda could get her JR Ranger booklet reviewed and she can get her badge this makes it her 55^th completed.

We started looking for a place for dinner and we finally decided on a place about 3 miles out of town.  The food was good, but it is not that cheap.

Before heading back to the RV, I decided to head out for a little adventure down a dirt road to a reservoir.  On the way there I had to hit the brakes hard because a doe ran across the road.  Once at the reservoir we made our way around the lake, we were able to see deer, a spring, and ducks with ducklings

Back at the RV, Turquoise is still not 100%, so we had to do a little cleaning up.

Offloading all the photos for the day will take a while.

Tonight I was told to make sure my light-stick was turned off because it is after “quite hours”.  I guess my light shines to bright.