We were looking forward to the next stop on our journey for several reasons. Cedar City, Utah would provide us access to Cedar Breaks National Monument, Bryce Canyon National Park, and the Dixie National Forest. It would also be where we would meet our cousins from Roanoke, Virginia to spend some time traveling together.
I have written about our cousins, the Prices, that were meeting us on this blog several times. They are the family that we visited in Philadelphia when their four year old daughter, Rowan, was there for treatment for a rare form of leukemia. They are also the family we flew back to Roanoke to be with when Rowan’s treatments did not work. The Prices have decided to spend some time together with their other daughter traveling the country in an RV to start the process of healing and learning to live with Rowan’s presence only in spirit. You can read more about their journey at www.roaming4rowan.com.
We arrived in Cedar City on Halloween, so we were hoping to find some trick or treating. We decided to use Cedar City as our base for exploration of the area because it was a decent sized town with, hopefully, a decent chance of Halloween. It did not disappoint. The Prices showed up just in time for the kids to get dressed up and strike out in search of candy. We found a perfect trick or treating neighborhood with lots of nice houses close together. The kids all had serious candy hauls, so we will have plenty of hiking snacks for the next month or so. It was great for Smith and Archer to have their little cousin along for the festivities.
We were excited to take the Prices out for their first hike in some time the next day. They had spent most of the past year in a hospital room, so it must have felt incredible to be out in the great expanse of nature of the west. Our first stop was Cedar Breaks National Monument. We did a hike along the rim of the canyon overlooking Cedar Breaks and then hiked to a frozen alpine pond. Cedar Breaks is a beautiful area. There are big views with evergreen trees and canyons, hoodoos (eroded spires of rock), and other features sculpted out of orange and red rock. It is late in the season – that meant cold temperatures but non-existent crowds. We were OK with that. We did hear some weird loud sounds and felt the ground shake several times. The kids didn’t like that so we just convinced them it was mining nearby. I still don’t know what it was.
We all made the drive to Bryce Canyon National Park the following day. While Cedar Breaks was beautiful, Bryce was epic. Bryce almost seems unworldly. It lays claim to the largest collection of hoodoos anywhere on earth. They are all carved out of the same orange, red, pink, and tan sandstone prominent in this area. It is one of the most beautiful areas we have seen so far on this trip. We did a great hike linking up the Queen’s Garden and Navajo Loop trails that dropped down into the canyon among the hoodoos and climbed back up.
Our next stop on our tour de adventure around Cedar City was the Lake Navajo area in the Dixie National Forest. This area is really cool looking because a volcano erupted here a couple thousand years ago and you can see volcanic rock and lava fields from the last eruption. We hiked to a waterfall, Cascade Falls, which serves as the main outlet for Navajo Lake through sinkholes and lava tubes.
The lava tubes in the area provided us the chance to do some spelunking (that is the cool way of saying “caving”). We climbed down into Ice Cave first but it was only a single chamber. Looking for a little more underground excitement, we headed to Mammoth Cave. Here you can hike up into the cave (actually a lava tube) about a quarter of a mile. We were looking forward to exploring a bit once we climbed down into the cave.
We donned the headlamps and bravely worked our way into the darkness at Mammoth Cave. It turns out that Archer only likes a cave for about 10 minutes and Jamie only likes a cave for about 10 feet (that’s when we saw the first bat). Some of the caves got shallow, so it was fun ducking through them until you just about knock yourself out (note to self – bring helmet next time). It was also a challenge to not think about the loud booms and shaking from a couple days ago wondering if the ceiling would come down on us or if lava would come blasting up through the tube we were playing in. We were reading about Mammoth later that evening and learned that the volcano there is still considered “active” since it has erupted in the last 10,000 years (2,000 years ago). I am not sure if caving in the lava tubes of an active volcano was super smart, but it sure was super fun.
We really enjoyed the time we got to spend in Cedar City. We enjoyed our afternoon adventures hiking and caving and we enjoyed the time we spent with our cousins. I am glad that we can be part of their journey of healing and adventure. Our confined-spaced-living family of four is great, but it sure is nice to be able to spend some time with friends as well. The Prices are headed to Zion while we are headed to Capitol Reef next. We all plan on meeting back up in Moab though. We look forward to continuing the adventure.
Hey Jamie and Jared,
We have really been enjoying reading your blog. Really good stuff
We are busy planning our trip next September to Zion, Bryce, and over to Moab then the Grand Canyon. We are making reservations now. The plan is to spend two or three days in each place/park. So, we need to go really prepared. If you can think of some good hikes Eileen and I can handle and places to see in Zion national Park and don’t mind emailing that to us, we would really appreciate it.
Keep up what you’re doing. We are living vicariously through you.