Loose in Southern Utah...WAIT! That might not have sounded like I intended....

After a hiatus of many moons, during which time we moved, lived in the Motorhome for 7 unfunny months and built a house - Beth and Barry resume their wandering ways aboard The Great Tourbus Adventure.  We departed Brentwood heading for our annual brush with wildlife death in Yellowstone and were promptly sidelined by a malfunctioning Brake-Buddy (no that isn't a little person we drag along under the Motorhome to slow us down) it's a device that keeps our aging, yet still almost trusty Jeep from running up our rear-end when we try to stop the behemoth Tourbus.

We cooled our heels (possibly the biggest 110 degree lie in the history of the universe) in a very ritzy RV Resort in Las Vegas and then split for Zion National Park where Beth purchased her 17th National Park Passport book because she can never remember to bring the previous 16 books along for the trip. Sheesh! It was a beautiful stop with wonderful wildlife sightings complete with Dessert Big Horn sheep which, I must say we're significantly better behaved than their Canadian counterparts (described in painful detail in an earlier post). Here's a couple of shots from Zion:

Gorgeous Zion National Park

The better behaved AMERICAN Desert Big Horn Sheep

We drove out of Zion headed for Bryce Canyon National Park and decided we'd stop for lunch and a break in Mt. Carmel -- we didn't do much research on where to eat cause we thought the signage said it all:

Yep! That's what it says all right...Home of the "ho-made" pies.
Can't say the food was anything to write home about
but the restaurant was besieged by dozens and dozens of hummingbirds.

Earlier this spring Barry once again channeled his inner cowboy on a trip with Bill Beifuss and the Rocky Mountain Gaited Mule Company. They drove through the Red Canyon area just outside Bryce Canyon NP and Barry had been determined to get back to the area ever since. I gotta say, I thought Zion NP was beyond description but Bryce just took my breath away.  These photos really don't do it justice and short of standing at 8000' elevation and seeing it with your own eyes, I don't have any kind of adequate words to describe it.

There was one aspect of the park in particular that caught my undivided attention.  In reading the information in the park brochure we learned that Bryce is one of the most unique and unusual geologic formations in the world.  Supposedly it isn't actually a canyon, though you could have fooled me, they say even geologists have trouble describing the formation of this remarkable area but what I can tell you is they have HOODOOS!  Now some of you will recall from a previous post a rather disappointing trek into Alberta Canada to see their much-touted but pitifully executed hoodoos.  In fact, in can be said that I was just disgusted with the Canadians and their misrepresentation of hoodoos as seen on giant video screens throughout their airport....You want hoodoos?  Get yourself to Bryce Canyon (though not a canyon) and take a look at these hoodoos!

 

Now them some hoodoos!  The color and variation in the rock formations was just astonishing.  In addition we were treated to a beautiful meadow alive with the burrows of the endangered Utah Golden Prairie Dog (and no, I don't know why its different than other Prairie Dogs but its "Golden" because it is golden colored).

Not even endangered Utah Prairie Dogs, golden or otherwise, could have prepared us for the sighting of a lifetime.  We had read that 20 or more California Condors were living and breeding in the wild after their release at Rainbow Ridge in Bryce Canyon National Park.  We stood breathlessly (not due to excitement but apparently due to old age and high elevation) at the 8500' overlook  studying the sky for a very long time.  Our only reward but still a very fine sighting were the Violett-Green Swallows and White-Throated Swifts (which were very swift by the way).

We finally gave up and headed down for the return trip through the park.  Most of the pullouts are on that side of the road so we stopped at the first available place to get a sense of that view.  We stood there discussing how much we had wanted to see the Condors - I mean REALLY, REALLY wanted to see wild Condors and while looking back across to where we'd previously been --- TA DA!  There they sat on the hoodoos of Rainbow Point!!!  We got binoculars on them and danced our happy dance - well, I danced my happy dance, yipped and yelped and generally celebrated a true lifetime birding moment.  Of course I was forced to call my big brother Wick, who was at that moment driving northward out of the bowels of Texas oil country toward Yellowstone and deliver my "Neener, neener, neener! I saw something you didn't speech."  Ah, the joy of one-up-manship...Yay for us!

Barry & Beth's attempt at a SELFIE