Roving Cooks

March 7: Sedona, AZ to Kanab, UT. 271 miles, 4.5 hours

March 7-26: Kanab, UT, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park

We spent about 3 weeks camped in Kanab to explore the area, which included Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. We had intended to also visit the Grand Canyon from here…but the North Rim doesn’t open until mid-May. The risk of just-in-time planning is that you miss those kinds of details. We were lucky to be able to go to Zion the first week when we could drive our truck in; starting in mid-March, the shuttle becomes mandatory and requires an advance ticket (which we weren’t able to obtain).

The kids and I scoped out the Zion Visitor Center early in the trip. We didn’t make it back for a hike, but perhaps will when the kids are older and I’m less paranoid around cliff edges. The drive through is beautiful. Greg went for a more challenging, solo sunrise hike up Angel’s Landing one morning.

The theme of this area (as evidenced by clothes, shoes, and the floor of the truck) was certainly that Kids Love Sand.

We took two separate visits to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. Similar to White Sands, you can rent or bring in sleds and slide down the dunes. The sand is soft, the dunes are tall. Grayson nailed the “multiple somersaults in a row” move, Madelyn perfected her “run, roll, and squeal”. Both kids convinced me to “lizard crawl” up the hills and somersault down. Apparently my inner ear is not what it once was – 3 somersaults had me spinning for a few minutes – but they were right on the fun factor.

We also found this little darkling beetle (actual size about 1-2 cm). As we’ve seen mostly plants on our travels, an up close encounter with a creature was cause for great delight. The kids followed it up the dune for about 30 minutes until it disappeared into the hill.

The area around Kanab has quite a bit of hiking, and we were able to find a few hikes at the right level and length for our small-legged crew. We started going through the “Belly of the Dragon” which was close, easy and fun.

After consulting with Greg, I worked up the nerve to put on the 4WD and bump Big Red and the kids on a few miles of sandy roads to the Peek a Boo canyon slot trail. The kids absolutely loved running through this slot canyon, searching for cave monsters, digging in sand and creating their own sand slides. Definitely the most enthusiasm for a hike they’ve shown to date.

Over the weekend, the four of us headed to the “Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch” slot canyon. Though not intended to be a sandy hike, the kids found piles of it alongside the trail and took frequent sand angel or “I’m swimming through the sand” breaks. This was a cool hike, featuring a ladder down into one side of the slot. Madelyn found an excellent walking stick (for us to share) and Grayson was almost worn out by the time we got back to the truck.

A bit further east of Kanab, we found Toadstool Trail; or as I told the kids “we’re looking for mushroom rocks”. This was a more popular trail and offered a few dogs to pet.

Also located in Kanab is the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary . We were able to book a couple (free) tours on different days; one at the Parrot house and another at the Bunny House. The Parrot tour reinforced my strong hope that Nana and Papa live a very long life caring for Jack the Parrot and Cookie the Cockatoo – those birds are loud! We had the manager of the Bunny House to ourselves for an hour, and the kids got to pet and feed treats to about 100 bunnies and a number of guinea pigs. They were both inspired to become animal caretakers (adding to future professions of astronaut, scientist, and artist/salesman).