Ed

[Today's Photos] We're at Ruby's Inn near Bryce Canyon. Ruby's has WiFi, but I don't have time to catch up on anything! We keep a pretty tight schedule, and if you look at the timestamp of this message you know it's way, way past my bedtime.

We had some snow on the drive here, but nothing that even I would worry about. There's more coming tonight, so our hikes tomorrow may be curtailed. Maybe I'll just take a nap.

Bryce is 100 million years younger than Zion. We're basically taking a tour through time as well as space: at Snow Canyon and Zion we saw Mesozoic sandstone deposits from 165 million years ago, at Bryce we'll see Cenozoic formations from only 65 MYA. Expect photos of hoodoos tomorrow.

[Today's Photos] We left St George right on time, and had an educational ride to Zion. Our resident geologist filled us in on details of the local terrain that we never would have noticed or known. We had just done this drive two days ago -- today, we learned what we missed.

Zion was chilly, enough for me to use my windbreaker. Ginger and I decided to depart from the crowd and hike on our own. We got to see Weeping Rock, an area of sandstone where the water seeps out. We've heard differing accounts of the time it takes water to seep through, but it's between one and four thousand years from the time rain falls on the top of a formation to the time it seeps through the side. The trail to Weeping Rock was damp but easily hiked in 5 minutes. The morning's rain had the waterfalls going strong, and we got to be behind one.

From Weeping Rock we took the shuttle to the Temple of Sinawava, then hiked the river trail for 30-40 minutes, then hiked up to Menu Falls, another spot where water seeps through.

We had to skip our afternoon hike because of weather reports from Bryce. It sounded like it coult be bad, so we skedaddled early and made it to Ruby's Inn. More on that later -- it's 7:30 and time for our lecture on Geology!

Rain! We woke up to sprinkles. For a while it even poured -- but only for a while. A nice desert rain. Pictured at right is our bus. It is almost entirely full. About four empty seats.

We're on the bus now, leaving St George for Zion. Our resident geologist is telling us about the local terrain, so I'll sign off for now.