One Last Hike at Bryce, then on to Escalante

This is the parking lot for the Mossy Cave trailhead. It’s just a half mile trail in to a falls and a cave on the edge of Bryce Canyon National Park. Even the parking lots here are beautiful.

We moved on today, but only 34 miles so we decided we had time to take this hike up Water Canyon.

This is called Water Canyon and not Water Creek because on its own there would only be water after rains or snow melt. But Mormon settlers in the valley below dug a ditch across half of the Paunsaugunt Plateau to bring water from the East Branch of the Sevier through this canyon and down to the Paria River and their crops. It took them from 1889 to 1892 to do it. Now water runs from about April through October.

The canyon, like all the others here, is lovely; with arches…

and rows of hoodoos.

After crossing a second footbridge and climbing a hill (there’s always a hill)…

we came to an overlook of the falls. That’s the other side of the arch across the way.

We walked around a bit upstream from the falls. There were hoodoos with a layer of white up here. The trail didn’t go far, this area is fragile and eroding because of the extra water brought through it.

We went back down to the bridge and walked up the canyon to the base of the falls and I took this little video, just to capture the sound of falling water in the desert.

Then we took another short branch of the trail to Mossy Cave. It was mossy, and had groundwater dripping from the top of ceiling of the overhang that formed the cave. I noticed what I thought were little stalactites forming. You can see the water drips in the video.

This sign had a picture of the cave in winter, when all the drips freeze into giant icicles.

Even with our wandering we only walked 1.3 miles, but as usual the walk was packed with beauty.

After lunch we packed up and headed out to our next destination, Escalante Petrified Forest State Park just outside the town of Escalante. This was 34 miles further northeast on Utah 12, the Scenic Byway.

And it was scenic! That’s Powell Point with the sun on it. It was clouding over creating some dramatic lighting.

The road was fairly dramatic in any light.

And now we are here, not in a parking lot anymore,

with some privacy and a great view out the dinette window. More on this place to come.