Snakes And Rabbits

We make it in fine time to see the fabled sunrise over Bryce Canyon, we choose ‘Sunrise Point’ as our spot – wonder why.

The sun pops itself over the canyon wall at 6:45am. It’s so moving I’m not ashamed to say we both welled-up. There are around fifty or so other people here, all hushed and awestruck; it’s far too early for the coach parties, they’ll be having their ‘SupaValu’ breakfast that they’ve paid for in the package.

The sun will surely continue to rise over Bryce Canyon long after we’ve destroyed each other with greed, disease and bad Nordic algorithm pop recordings. I didn’t wear my cowboy hat – going to rectify that for the rest of the day as we tootle to Page AZ, a short drive day.

By 9am we’re out on the dirt of Cottonwood Canyon Road and we remember that we still like both kinds of music – County and Western.

Cottonwood Canyon Road cuts right through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from Cannonville UT to Hwy 89, it’s about 50 miles over dirt roads and you are going to feel small. Pathetically. Overlooking the basins and plateaus in the glaring silence renders the need for speech pretty redundant. Have a proper car though… y’know, big and expensive. You really don’t want car trouble here. Speaking of which…..

A car stops alongside us as I am taking a quiet pee over some geological wonder or another. A German guy, sweating profusely, whimpers at me ‘how far to gas..?”  After my tiny mind had processed roughly 13 potential jokes we told him it was only 25 miles. He said nothing. His wife/girlfriend was looking like thunder in the back of the car and he silently dissolved into the heat haze at a sensible 15mph. I hope he made it and I hope he’s still in a relationship – never let your passenger see the fuel gauge. Pretend it’s all fine even if you’re starting to sweat and clench your buttocks. Always keep the car fuel levels high, I can’t bang-on about this enough. Seeing the warning light pop on in the middle of nowhere can cause hours of unnecessary heartache. Even if it’s a scary hillbilly gas station – fill up, it’s only like mid-Wales after all.

We have a pre-booked tour of Antelope Canyon but have lost track of which time-zone we are in (it seems to change regularly at the moment) so turn up hours early. Note to self: always check which time-zone you’re in. The canyon is another geological wonder to end all other geological wonders. And yet again it is pointless trying to use grand statements declaring how mind-boggling it was. That is David Attenborough’s job. Our child-like minds were struck by hearing about the snakes and rabbits that fall into this beautiful hole-in-the-world as they unwittingly pass over it at night and are trapped forever – the snake is the happier of the two. We were also bewildered by the shocking trainers a German tourist was sporting; I kept him close and sneaked a photograph of these man-made atrocities amid such natural beauty – we also think he had tattoos to match his socks. And let the record show that we were the only people – absolutely and positively the only people – to tip the Navajo guide. I was watching. Are we patronising twats or are the others just twats? The big questions.

Page AZ manages to have a restaurant that serves the most inedible overpriced food we can remember in any of these trips – and that is some feat. In fact Page AZ is a motel pit-stop to sleep and get out early the next day. There is a remarkably preserved bowling alley in a Main St bar but the cowboy ranch was a bit sad – now I know what depressed horses look like.