I had a lovely walk again this morning.  Yesterday I was chilly in just a t-shirt, so today I decided to dress a little more warmly.  Inspired by my last post of fall colors, I pulled out a lightweight sweatshirt that Mom's friend Marge handpainted for her.  Every time Mom wore it I oohed and aahed over it - and guess what?  When Mom was culling her sweatshirts a few years ago I 'inherited' it.  Wish I had a better picture, but you get the idea.

In the course of my walk I stopped at Shelley's yard sale (mostly clothes and toys her daughter has outgrown), and noticed a pool/sandbox 'boat' that would be great for Willie.  So I texted Estera to let her know, and by the time I made it to the corner and back her husband Benny was already there, and had purchased it.  When the other neighbors saw how much traffic Shelley's yard sale was generating, they started putting stuff out, so I stayed and watched Willie while Benny shopped elsewhere.  Anyone surprised that I managed to find some goodies for Tami's new little niece? Kids' clothes are so cute, and at such low prices Shelley practically paid me to take them!

And now back to last week's trip.  After our wonderful time in Antelope Canyon we headed to Panguitch, in southern Utah.  Along the way we stopped at a park museum to admire their dinosaur bone exhibit and buy a few books.  And I really enjoyed this (tilt your head left) rock exhibit.

Two of the layers looked just like wooden planks, even up close.

We got to the small town of Panguitch early enough in the afternoon to do the quilt shops - at least that was the plan - but couldn't find them!  I'm pretty sure that was the town where my brother Andy and I had our quilting adventure some 25 years ago, but it was pretty slim pickings now.  Would you believe that (on one shopkeeper's suggestion) we ended up at the hardware store (the owner's wife is a quilter.)  Of course we did have to stop in at Bronco Bobbi's.  When she found out we shared the same name, she presented me with one of her magnets.

That night we had a delicious dinner in town.  Tom was quite happy with his smoked brisket (although I think his is better) and I enjoyed my chicken tortilla soup (after I removed all the crunchy tortillas.... mouth was still  very much in the baby-food stage!)  During our drive to Panguitch we had watched smoke in the distance get thicker all day, although the actual fire seemed to be just over the next mountain.  By the time we came out from dinner ash was floating in the air, which did not bode well for the next day's trip to Bryce.  But Wednesday morning dawned reasonably clear, and off we went (after first stopping in at Bronco Bobbi's for specialty coffee for Tom and hot chocolate for me.) 


Heading into the park I spotted a group of antelope walking in the trees (good eyes, Bobbi!)  On the way out, we got a great view of a small herd of about a dozen grazing in a field by the side of the road.

Once in the park proper we stopped at every viewpoint (and sometimes just by the side of the road) to walk out to the rim to take pix.  It was even more dramatic than I remembered from years ago.  Of course I took many, many (over 100) pix, most of them keepers, of the beautiful rock formations.  Here are just a few of them:

We kept 'bumping into' the same foursome at many of the viewpoints, and had fun pointing out shapes in the various rocks.  From the other side this looked like 'just a rock', but from this view we all agreed it definitely looked like bare buttocks.

This one looked like a woman holding a child.

This arch (one of many) was the most spectacular.

Two tourists with that same arch in the background:

Bet you didn't spot the hikers in the photo above...

There were a couple of hikers - really - look hard in the red circle below

It was still quite scenic outside the park proper.

Did you notice the Sphinx rock on the right?

And that concludes my mini-tour of Bryce.

We had a late lunch after leaving the park (my homemade chicken noodle soup was incredible!) and then headed toward Zion.  Finding a room in Springdale on a Wednesday wasn't quite as easy as we had expected/hoped, but did eventually prevail.  While I wasn't the least bit hungry for dinner Tom was, so we stopped in at a sports bar across from our motel.  While he had a little something I watched the Orioles lose AND the Yankees win.  <sigh> I was hoping for just the opposite, but still, considering that the Orioles had been expected to finish at the bottom and were tied for first place with the Yankees until the bitter end, it was still a very good season.