Fire and Ice

We had a great dinner at our hotel last night. The owners were very chatty as was the New York couple sitting next to us. And the dog enjoyed meeting horses for the first time – though they weren’t on the menu.

Getting into the car this morning Josie and I had the scare of our life as we stepped over a snake. Once we calmed down, we drove off to the Doggy Dude Ranch, which will be Josie’s home for the weekend. She’ll get to play in a pool and go for swims in the river, etc., so I think she’ll have a great time.

As we approached Bryce Canyon National Park, we noticed a lot of smoke pouring out of the forest and thought that might put a damper on the day’s plans. Once inside the park, it turned out that it really was burning. It was what they call a ‘controlled burn’ and a dozen or so park rangers were calmly doing their jobs of burning 400 acres in the park.

Bryce Canyon is spectacular. And according to the original owner, Ebeneezer Byrce, it’s ‘A heck of a place to lose a cow.’ In the middle of our tour through the canyon a storm starts to build. The adventure seeker in Andy causes him to get out a huge metal pole in the middle of a lightening storm. As he’s trying to capture lightening on his camera a park ranger tells everyone the storm is “Gonna be a big un’ and please get back in our cars and definitely get rid of the big metal pole”. He ignores him.

We rest for a few hours while the hail and rain passes and finish our tour. The plan to go to a real-life rodeo is ruined by the storm, but that’s ok because we still get to spend the night in a real-life teepee!! That’s right, teepee. Andy has booked us our own private island on a private lake. Nothing on it except a tree, a fire ring, and of course, the teepee. Superb.