Week 3.
Having reached Hatch and spent a day riding in the sun it was time to get back to work. That meant visiting Bryce Canyon. Bryce whilst not as big as the Grand Canyon is more varied and offers more to see.
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Bryce also offered us the chance to meet up with Ian's Mum and David. There was also a chance for Nic to capture three generations of Ian's family on camera. Unfortunately for Ian , good looks seem to have skipped a generation.
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The weather at Bryce was warm but because it is at over 8000ft there was still snow on the ground and it was windy. The snow made for some excellent pictures ... the wind for some excellent hairstyles.
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As we are good English people we got very excited at the prospect of snow and couldn't resist building a snowman.
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We visited Bryce on two days and on the third decided to move on. When we woke up on the third day we had received a bunch of snow. It was definitely time to move on. The picture shows our trailer standing next to Hooligans pen ... three days previously we had been riding in high heat in this same area.
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As we were loading Hooligan into the trailer the weather got worse. It took a while to load him and we left for Salina. We stayed at Salina (there are no pictures of Salina as it was a dump) for one night and then headed for Moab. We were looking for a place to stay for a while so Hooligan could rest properly and we could have plenty to do ... if the weather improved Moab looked like just the place.
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Moab proved to be what we were hoping for. We found Hooligan a large covered stall , we found ourselves a cabin with rear views of the snow covered La Sal mountains and front view of a rocky cliff behind which the sun set. There was mountain biking , hiking and two National Parks ... and better still the temperature was in the 80s. The picture below is of Nic in Arches National Park ...
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... and Ian in the same park with the La Sal mountains in the background.
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We spent the evenings eating outside our cabin , the sunsets behind the cliffs were fantastic.
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We hiked in the foothills of the La Sal mountains and found a great waterfall.
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Later in the week we again met up with Ians Mum and David. We explorerd the "Island in the Sky" part of Canyonlands National park with them. The park is a huge plateau lifted above the surrounding area. The edge that Nic is standing on (Ian too scared to go near the edge) was 1000ft down , then there is a further step down a 1000ft to the Colorado river.
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We had been in Moab for five days and Hooligan was still under the weather. We decided to stay on longer to enjoy everything Moab could offer ... we also discovered the Moab Brewery which was the icing on the cake.
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