day 58: running it back 🏜️

Bryce Canyon, UT to Bryce Canyon, UT — 0 mi, 0 ft

hello from the absolutely STUNNING bryce canyon, utah! sarah is back to tell you about our rest day adventures in this gorgeous park!!! 🧡

after a well-deserved late wake-up for the previous day’s bikers in the campground (i drove the day before), we all began mingling over breakfast while deciding how the day was going to go. some really cool birds with mohawks also decided to join us. after munching on some berry granola then cinnamon toast crunch, we decided we would hit our hike in the afternoon, and spend the rest of the evening running our usual errands and doing other miscellaneous tasks.

as of the hike, after a bit of research on joseph’s end for something that would give us the best overall exposure to the park but wasn’t TOO excessive/strenuous, he decided on the navajo loop. after some scrolling through my camera roll and texts with my mom, i realized this was the exact same hike i did with my family when we visited bryce ourselves 10 YEARS AGO!!! 😮 a whole decade…crazy. thanks to my biking legs now, i was definitely a lot less prepared back then, but it was still HARD, due to its consistently steep grades towards the end. sticking to the childhood theme, we ended up talking about computer games, books, and other hobbies we participated in as kids.

it’s so interesting to think about how i was coincidentally brought back to walk the exact same path i had walked 10 years ago. the millions of steps in between then and now tell so many stories: some expected, but many not at all. after all, life has its own unexpected turns and detours, steep climbs, rewarding descents, and monotonous (yet sometimes relaxing) flats in-between. even in the overlap between then and now, even though the path is the same, the traveler is very different—older, grown (at least more than before, and in many ways). her companions are, too, but all are—in their own ways—family. i wish i could go back and walk with her, tell her that things turn out NOT at ALL like she would have expected, but to be excited anyway. i wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any other way—the fight was well worth it, and the rewards sown even more so. maybe one day i will return, with even more stories to tell, even more growth achieved…💫

after a nostalgic, reminiscent ruck through the canyons, we eventually made it back to the trail connecting to the campgrounds and started thinking about lunch. actually, we had all started thinking about lunch about 2 miles ago, but now was the time to act. we walked past the camp restaurant and pizzeria, and after realizing the first was too expensive and the second would be too long of a wait, we eventually decided to make our way in a hunger-induced, feverish (and maybe slightly grumpy) haze back to the campground and scavenge our own food stores. while the others had some quick sandwiches and headed into town to run errands (buy groceries for dinner, do laundry, etc.), joseph and i, with nothing much to do, stuck around the campground to rest. we eventually made a box of annie’s mac and cheese with some of last night’s garlic bread on the side, and ate it in camping chairs on our amazon box of learning festival supplies. maybe a little scuffed, but definitely a top 5 spokes meal (definitely not influenced by my hours of RAGING hunger…) what can i say, i’m a sucker for pasta, bread, carbs in general…🥖

we did our dishes, the town people finished their tasks and returned, and dinner was started. this was ramona’s first time cooking for the group, so we were all very excited to see what she was going to whip up. she had decided on a lovely dish dubbed “grandma’s soup,” which was a hearty mix of potatoes (her favorite vegetable), carrots, and cabbage in a warm, comforting broth. on the side was rosemary bread and chicken potstickers 🥟 which i DEFINITELY didn’t eat way more than my fair share of, straight out of the pan.

thoroughly relaxed, we hit the hay early to prepare to continue our utah adventure into the grandeur of zion national park the next day. 

yeah, that’s DEFINITELY what happened…

with love,

“schmitty” 💗