Farley, Down by the River: Farley Heads for the Desert, Day 3: Hoodoo You Love?

In the middle of the night, I woke up to the rattling of a food package. I swore we'd taken a mouse on board, but Marc looked through the cabinet--where we keep all the food except a couple of things that wouldn't fit in plastic bins--and there were no signs of invaders. A little later, Marc heard it, too, and we realized we had a new vacation partner.

It was super-cold when we got up, 24 degrees on the new outside thermometer Marc gave me for Christmas. We bundled up and headed into Bryce Canyon National Park, where I asked one of the rangers to suggest a 5- or 6-mile hike. She told me to try Peekaboo Loop, a "strenuous" route accessible from Bryce Point. Apparently neither of us can read, because we mistakenly parked at Inspiration Point, which added an extra three miles round-trip along the rim to our planned hike. Along the way, we saw an interpretive sign that said if you bring back a pic of yourself at three of the signs showing gold medallions, you'd get a prize at the visitor's center. So, we did that, and I was awarded an "I hiked the Hoodoos" sticker afterward.

Since the hikes in Bryce are down into the amphitheater and then up, up, up to finish, we were both pretty tired. So we decided to end our day in the park and get in a few hours' drive before nightfall. We stopped in Kanab, Utah, home of the free Little Hollywood Museum. In a backlot behind a big gift shop, they have several facades and buildings that were used in Western movies and TV shows shot in the area. Gunsmoke and The Outlaw Josie Wales are a couple of them, along with Kenny Loggins video (?).

We continued on to another free BLM campsite. It was a few hundred yards from a river, so we wandered down, happened to find a bunch of firewood along the shores, and we had a nice fire and called it a night. Oh, and lesson learned here: If you walk through the sand to the river, be sure to clean your feet off before you climb up to put the sheet on the bed. Uggh. Nature's exfoliator.