I love being in the right spot for a topless night in the desert…not that kind of topless! Ha! We set up the tent after dark and since we were in the desert, with no chance of rain…or floating sand…we left the rainfly off.
Day Seven
Wednesday, June 5th, 2019
Snow Canyon State Park
While I don’t love getting into a campground after dark, I do love the surprise of what the place looks like in the morning! Snow Canyon State Park did not disappoint! We had site number 28, which is a very cool campsite. There were two tent pads that were both tucked down into the bushes. We couldn’t see any neighbors from our tent and they couldn’t see us from the road. The site was in the middle of a loop, which I normally would not choose for a campsite, but our site was the only one in the middle and the tent was sheltered from the noise of vehicles driving around the loop.
It was a bit of a trek from the parking spot to the tent, but that’s also what made it a very neat spot! Look at those views around us!
When I plan our trips, I try to mix primitive campgrounds with a night at a campground with shower facilities and Snow Canyon State Park had a nice shower house. We would tent camp here again!
After we packed up the tent, we stopped at the visitor center to get information about the trails. I knew we wanted to visit Jenny’s Canyon, a short slot canyon, but I wasn’t sure what longer hike would give us the most bang for our buck. The ranger suggested the Hidden Pinyon Trail.
Jenny’s Canyon
Our first stop was Jenny’s Canyon, which is a very short slot canyon. The canyon is not far from the parking area and it’s so pretty…very different geology from anywhere else we’ve visited on this trip. Sadly, they named this canyon in memory of a rock climber, named Jenny, who fell while climbing in the park.
Different erosion rates of the sandstone created all of these pockets and holes in the canyon wall. They looked like a miniature version of cliff dwellings. They might actually be little dwellings for tiny critters!
The most interesting set of holes looked like they formed a primitive image of a mother and a baby. At least, that’s what I see when I look at this image.
The trail to Jenny’s Canyon was really pretty, with cacti, pink penstemon and sagebrush. This park is so incredibly beautiful and early June was a great time for seeing wildflowers in bloom!
Hidden Pinyon Trail
This was a fun trail! For some reason, I did not record a track for the hike, but I recreated the route in Gaia and it was about a one mile trail, round trip. According to the time stamps on the photos, it took us about an hour to hike the loop. When I mapped the trail on Gaia, I found out that there was an overlook that we missed. Ooops! It’s a trail that would be worth hiking more than once, though, so that will give us something new to see if we ever make it back to Snow Canyon.
This little section of trail required us to sit down and slide off the rock to reach the trail below. Joey was hanging out there waiting to take my stuff so I could take a turn at it. I have short legs, so this was not necessarily my favorite part of the trail, but it made the hike more interesting.
I cannot resist photographing cacti on the trail…or other pretty plants, for that matter. We wanted to find somewhere that served prickly pear cactus on their menu, but we never did run across any to try.
Snow Canyon Scenic Drive
We love a good scenic drive and the one through Snow Canyon might be a contender for Favorite State Park Scenic Drive. Every curve in the road leads to a new colors and textures. I would go so far as to say that we liked Snow Canyon State Park much, much more than the nearby Zion National Park. For one, you can drive yourself around and two, there are far fewer people. The scenery along the scenic drive is very similar, and might even be better.
Snow Canyon Overlook
I usually enjoy canyons more from the bottom than from the overlooks, but this particular overlook is the exception. The contrast in color and texture between the red sandstone and the sagebrush is gorgeous. I love that you can see the road cutting through the scene to provide a little context.
Snow Canyon State Park is such an amazing place and we would love to visit again. We only had a morning planned for exploring the park because of warnings that it could be extremely hot there during the time we went. Temps in the park are above 100° often in the summer, so I didn’t want to take a chance on spending more than a night and a morning in the park before moving on. We’d love to go back again someday!
After finishing up at the park, we decided to grab Flavor of the Day frozen custards from Culvers in Saint George. They had left the coupons on the sides of the kids’ meal bags the night before, so we got bonus free custards! Those hit the spot after a morning in the hot sun!
Pipe Spring National Monument
The drive to our next campsite was a little more then four hours, which we broke up by stopping at Pipe Spring National Monument along the way. Pipe Spring National Monument preserves the story of human life, settlement, and struggle in the desert.
Native people lived here for thousands of years because the spring provided the water necessary to live in the desert. In the 1850s, new settlers moved into the area and altered the landscape, causing conflict between the two groups of people.
Pipe Spring National Monument was very interesting. The kids worked on Junior Ranger books while we watched the park film and looked around the visitor center. They offer guided ranger walks, but we did not take one, although, in looking back, I think that would’ve been pretty interesting.
We walked around the outdoor area to look at the spring and living history scenes they had set up. I can see why both groups would want to live in this particular spot. Having a water source like this spring would mean water for crops and living life.
Disputes over water were not the only conflicts between the native people and the new settlers. The new settlers felt the need to push their religion on the native people. They traveled west to “spread the good word” and convert “the heathens,” meaning the native people. I’m not sure what it was about how this was explained at this particular park, but it really clicked for me as to how religious folks seem to think they are better than anyone else and must convert people to believing in the same things they do. It was enlightening, to say the least, especially realizing that this goes on to this day. To be clear, I’m not saying I have a problem with religious folks…to each, their own…but can you imagine being native to the land for thousands of years and then having new people move in and tell you what you should believe in?
The kids finished up the last of their junior ranger books and were sworn in as junior rangers. We also looked around the gift shop for a bit, but didn’t find anything we couldn’t live without.
Grand Canyon North Rim
Another three hours later, we finally reached our destination for the night, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon! In 2018, we took a road trip to visit the South Rim and really enjoyed that, so since we were not far from it, I wanted to visit the North Rim.
The North Rim is highly recommended over the South Rim on travel forums, so I wanted to find out for myself if it was better than I remembered it as a teenager. We had visited the North Rim the year I graduated from high school, and after Bryce Canyon, I had not been impressed with this particular hole in the ground. I was curious to see if it had improved with age since then, especially because we enjoyed ourselves so much the year before.
Brace Yourselves
We arrived at the campground while the sun was still high in the sky! Shocker, I know! We even lost an hour at the Arizona border and still made it before dark. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves after setting up the tent in the daylight.
North Rim Campground
We got lucky with a last minute reservation for Site #59 at the North Rim Campground, which was the only reason I decided going out of our way was worth the extra miles. Now, we could say we tent camped on both the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon. I wouldn’t call it the most epic campsite we’ve ever had, but considering its’ location, I think we did alright.
After getting the tent set up, we decided to go have a look around. We stopped in at the visitor center to get Junior Ranger books. The North Rim has their own books and badge that’s different from the South Rim! We also took a walk through the lodge out on to the deck, something I remember visiting the last time I was there. The entire lodge and visitor center area was packed with people, and the deck was lined with chairs that had people packed in up to the railings. I have no idea why the folks on the forums insist that the North Rim has fewer people. That might be true, but all of them appeared to be crammed on that deck to watch sunset together. Not my idea of a good time, for sure.
We grabbed a couple meatball subs to go from the little restaurant by the Grand Canyon Lodge and split them between the three of us. On the way back to the campground, we decided to stop and eat them at a picnic area while we waited for the sunset. An older gentleman was also there with his camera, but I don’t think he was especially excited to have company.
We went back to the campground and decided to take a hike out to the rim to see what we could see. I’m not really a sunset or sunrise chaser. I love the blue hour more, and this one didn’t disappoint. We were certainly not alone on the trail, but this was way better than sharing the evening light packed in on a deck with a railing in front of us.
I’m glad we were able to see the Grand Canyon in this light. Like anywhere else with rock formations, the blue hour light definitely softens the look and brings out the colors of the rocks. It’s never the same in harsh sunlight. This was an amazing way to end the day and we walked back to our campsite in the dark. We also went back to the Grand Canyon Lodge for the evening ranger talk, but I don’t remember what that was about.
When we got back from the ranger talk, the kids worked on their Junior Ranger books while I studied the maps again. We had reached the end of what I had planned in advance. The plan to get back home was to wing it, choose-our-own-adventure style.
My tentative idea had been that we would go east from the North Rim and visit Monument Valley, but I couldn’t decide how we should get home after that. I didn’t really want to drive through Colorado, but we could go back through Moab, one of our favorite towns in the desert.
I had also been thinking about going back to Bryce Canyon to see if I could get a replacement for the shirt I bought the year before. The washing machine had chewed up my shirt the first or second time I washed it, almost immediately after we had arrived home. Since we had not tent camped in Bryce Canyon the year before, I also wanted to see if we could get a first come, first served spot there for a night.
Will we visit Monument Valley or revisit Bryce Canyon? Yep, I am leaving you here on a cliffhanger, so be sure to subscribe to find out which direction we will go!