Patient. Did you know I love the desert? Shocking, I know, but I can't get enough of the red rocks, towering cliffs, deep canyons, and threads of water that snake through the baked earth. Of course, I'm talking about the desert in summer. Up until this year, I'd only ever visited the desert in summer or autumn, when temperatures during the day easily hit or surpassed 90 degrees and nighttime lows weren't much less. This January, however, I finally had a chance to visit the best place on the planet during the winter, and it didn't disappoint. The desert in winter is everything I wanted it to be, even with (and maybe because of) the extensive closures due to ice/snow/bad weather. Although I now live in East Texas, I'm originally from Nebraska so I know how to drive on snow and ice, even if I have a tiny two-wheel drive Yaris. Bad weather isn't something that bothers me, and quite honestly, I prefer winter travelling just because there are significantly less people at the places I want to see. I travel to find peace and solitude, and there's no better time to find those qualities than when it is snowing.
Halfway through this year's winter-week in the desert, I found myslef making an unplanned stop at Bryce Canyon National Park. I had been forced to abandon my plans to hike and camp in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument due to road closures, so continued on and stopped to see the famous hoodoos topped with snow. Bryce has the highest overall elevation of the Big Five national parks in Utah, so I was unsurprised to find it snowing softly when I arrived at the park. I knew from my trip research that the park road was mostly closed and that the plow crews only cleared about a mile, up to the second viewpoint, but decided it was worth a stop anyway. I arrived at Bryce Point and found myself alone, enveloped in a thick layer of fog that obscured everything. There was something about being at a place where I knew amazing vistas were layed out below me, but hiding from the world, that was enchanting in itself. I didn't get to see hoodoos covered in snow, but with the fluffy cold stuff gently falling from the clouded air around me, I wasn't disappointed.
It didn't take me long to get my fill of fog-choked vistas before I decided to leave the park and head to my next destination, although it was snowing a little harder and I half-wondered if I should just stay put until it cleared up. I didn't, and turned on to the main road to continue my trip. Before long, however, the soft snow became harder and smaller, and the winds picked up. I was forced to inch through the storm, fighting to keep my car on the road and to see where I was going in near white-out conditions. It took me thirteen miles, thirteen white-knucked curvy winding miles, to finally decide that I was making a huge mistake in trying to push forward. I was going so slow I could have walked faster than I was driving, but I really didn't want to slide off the side of the road into the bottom of a canyon. Thanks but no thanks. Even with my upbringing (my birthday is in January, I learned to drive on ice) I don't remember the last time I was stupid enough to try to drive through a full-blown blizzard. I slowly inched into a u-turn, and painstakingly drove back to the hotel located at the entrance to Bryce Canyon.
The decision to turn around was a good one, as I found out from the hotel clerk that the road I was trying to get to was closed not long before I pulled into the hotel driveway. I got a room for the night and resigned myself to the fact that I had to spend more money on a hotel when I should have been camping. I was consoled a little bit, though, when I discovered that the hotel sold bottles of wine from Castle Creek, a winery located in Moab who makes a delicious white table wine, and I *might* have bought three bottles to help me get through the storm. I got to my room, borrowed a wine glass from the in-house restaurant, and settled in to spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying myself.
About an hour before sunset the storm broke, and it actually cleared off enough to convince me to leave the warm hotel and venture back into the park with the lure of snow-covered hoodoos. The plow crew had their work cut out for them clearing the small portion of road, and I was lucky enough to get behind of of them as they made their way up to the viewpoints. When I arrived, I knew I had made the right decision to come back; the fog had lifted enough for the amphitheater full of red rock hoodoos to be visible, and the view was stunning. I didn't even feel the cold as I trudged through snowdrifts to the very edge of the cliff, marveling at how much winter changes the landscape. I stayed there for a long time, until the fog closed in again and I was left in a swirling gray cloud at the edge of the world. I returned to my hotel, happy and satisfied with my decision to stop at Bryce in the first place and to come back and stay the night.
Another blizzard closed in overnight, so when dawn broke the world was covered in a fresh six inches of snow. Once again, I followed a plow into the park and visited the overlooks, but the fog was thick and showed no signs of lifting. I still left the park a happy girl, and found Hwy 12 to be snowpacked but passable as I continued on.
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