Cedar Breaks (it also smells nice!)

After our long (long) backpack along the West Rim, we were ready for something a little shorter last weekend,  so we decided to take it easy (relatively) and check out Cedar Breaks National Monument.

I'm not exactly sure what the difference is between a National Park and a National Monument - they seem pretty much identical to me.  At first I assumed monument meant there was - well - some sort of monument there.  Like a statue.  Nope.  They are both basically large areas of scenic wilderness with view points, hiking trails, and a small ranger booth to collect your money and answer questions for old codgers in camper vans.

Cedar Breaks could almost be mistaken for Bryce.  It is like Bryce's little cousin.  A huge canon valley full of multi-colored cliffs and spires of sandstone standing like an army of drip sandcastles.  It is just a little smaller (and graciously free of tourists!).

Like Bryce, it is fairly high up in the mountains - in this case right around 10,000 ft - which means while it was still relatively warm in St, George, with leave leaves changing colors and such,  it is downright cold at Cedar Breaks.  Leaves?  Long gone.  Replaced by ice covered twigs and relatively annoyed looking squirrels.

This high up, there is already snow on the ground.  The park (or "Monument"... whatever...)  is already closed for the winter.  The rangers are gone and the facilities are boarded up - but the road is still open.  Once the snow really hits, even the snow plows get scared to be up here, and they just stop plowing - then it's all over until the roads melts free in the spring.

We decided to take advantage of the closure, forgo the silly rule banning dogs, and brought Maggie along.  Yup, we're rebels.

(Let me say again how annoying the anti dog rules are out here...  Don't want our dog in your restaurant?  OK - understandable.  Don't want her in your 1 million acre wilderness?  That's just being silly.)

So the three of us hiked an excellent trail about 4 miles out and back around the rim of the canyon.  On one side, a sheer cliff of several hundred feet opening up to a huge desert valley of sandstone creations.  On the other an ancient pine forest.  Old twisted trees, some as much as 1700 years old, surrounded in snow and fed by a tiny frozen stream.

Having grown up in Newfoundland, snow and frozen streams are fairly common to me, and so I spend most of my time looking towards the canyon.  For Stephanie, having grown up in Hilton Head, snow is still fairly novel, and so she spent most of her time taking pictures of the forest.  As for Maggie, just getting to go with us was enough. She was just happy to finally have some snow again to roll around it.

On the way home we swung by Brian Head, a small ski hill in the area that we intend to spend a lot of time at this winter - me skiing, Stephanie curled up by the fire with a hot chocolate and a good book.  It is the highest peak in the county, and there is a road open to the summit, so we took the new wheels up for a spin.  You could see all the way across Utah and into Nevada and Arizona.

Up Next... Kanarra Creek.