Blinded by the light

Things are looking up today. After our bitter Zion post, we went back to our campsite to find that there was a really cool astronomy presentation going on right across the road from our tent. There were a few volunteers who had built their own telescopes at home, and we got to see Saturn, the moon, a few binary stars, nebulas, and other cool things. Earlier in the day, these same two volunteers were at the National Forest Visitor Center with special solar filters so we could look at the sun. Very cool! We finally got a good night sleep (the night before we heard a weird growling animal and got less than four hours of sleep), and we woke up to a better and brighter day.

We went to Bryce canyon today, which was not nearly as crowded as Zion. We had decided to hike the longest hike in the park, packing up our bags, a few snacks, and plenty of water. Right before we were going to head out on the trail, it started thundering and has not stopped intermittently pouring and thundering all day. Luckily, we did not do that long trail. We did a few short trails and realized that we are ridiculously tired. I think it's a combination of poor sleep habits from weird, growling animals, touring nonstop over the past few weeks, and terrible eating habits (although we have been better at eating three meals daily). We realized today that it has been 5 straight days of National Parks, which is awesome but very exhausting. Tomorrow is recovery day. We are planning on getting up whenever we wake up (or are awakened by wildlife), packing up, and driving until our audio book ends. At that point, we will finally get a chance to do some laundry, charge up all of our electronics (it's sad how dependent we are, but we need electricity!), and get some mental recovery. After that, we are headed up to Yellowstone which brings up our next topic of conversation: Bears. Seriously, one of our best friends is from Utah and tells us that bears are no big deal, but we are afraid. We looked at a book the other day showing various ways to tie your food up in trees so bears will be less likely to eat you. We aren't exactly sure how camping in bear country will go...it will likely involve some "little girl screams" from Robbie at some point.

We are sitting in the world's smallest grocery store's parking lot right now, and we can't really see our pictures from today very well because of the glare from the sun. We will post lots of pictures tomorrow.