Started off as a quiet week but then got busier at Bryce Canyon with a holiday hoodoo moon rising.
I am always happy to work on holidays as I don’t want to be out traveling anywhere. So I made a quick trip to Tropic for a few groceries and treated myself to lunch at IDK BBQ—plus a couple dinners from leftovers—before the Independence Day weekend. Other than a couple town trips for groceries I really haven’t gone anywhere out of the park.
Skippy the Hippy
The quietness must have been the lull before the storm because starting Friday the crowds increased. And was it just the full moon, or more idiot unprepared visitors that made me want to scream. Don’t think I was the only Ranger who felt that way, especially by the end of the weekend when it quieted down a bit.
Yet when walking down the Navajo trail a few switchbacks with just enough hikers passing in both directions I decided not to howl at the holiday hoodoo moon. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Friday a storm blew through complete with rain, thunder, and lightning. The heavy clouds cancelled the park’s scheduled moon walk and my idea of going to the rim for an almost full moon over the hoodoos. I did have a few people join me for the 2pm hoodoo geology talk and roved near the Navajo Loop trailhead before it started to rain. Then back at our information tables outside the visitor center when I really noticed the increase in people.
In fact, by the time I got home that night I was in a foul mood and ready to scream, “GO HOME!” What are these people all doing out on a vacation not wearing masks during a pandemic? I began to wish I wasn’t here and could go back to isolating in some gorgeous natural place with no people. It’s rather early in the season to wish for it to be over already. Yet nothing is normal about this summer.
Besides, it would be more difficult to find that quiet natural place to isolate right now because RV rentals and sales are up 300-400% making it hard to find places to disperse camp. Again I kind of wanted to scream, “STAY HOME!” Now is not the time to go in debt buying a new RV you know nothing about then taking it down the highway and not even know what to cook for dinner. I’ve seen that question repeatedly on RV groups. (OK, enough ranting, maybe.)
Thank goodness much needed synchronicity happened the next day when I separately met two wonderful women, younger than me, on their first solo road trips and was reminded of myself at 22-years old traveling to Southwest national parks in my Vega with a large dog. They’d both lost jobs because of COVID19 and decided to seek independence. So even though crazy busy again, they renewed my faith in at least some of humanity.
Clear skies on the 4th of July probably made those watching fireworks happy. I am always happy to live in a national park at that time where fireworks are illegal. I do like the colors, really dislike the noise, and worry much about possible injury and fire. So for me, much better to make photographs while watching the light of the holiday hoodoo moon, and presumably a partial penumbra eclipse. So I headed down the Navajo Loop Trail a few switchbacks to get below the hoodoos.
Getting home past bedtime, I didn’t look the shots over until the morning and processed a few of what I consider the best. That’s about 1% of the many taken. Once seen on the larger laptop screen I wondered why I, A. didn’t see an eclipse, and B. why the moon looked ovoid, flattened somehow before realizing that was the result of the partial eclipse.
Eclipses happen when Earth’s shadow falls on the moon and this was only the lighter, outer shadow, known as the penumbra.
July’s full moon is widely known as the buck moon, named because mid-summer is when male deer, called bucks, grow their new antlers. However, it’s also known as the thunder moon in reference to the summer’s frequent thunderstorms, which we all hope happen soon.
Monday, the schedule took Paula and me to Yovimpa Point, the furthest south overlook in Bryce Canyon. Here we talked about the vast landscape seen below with a 90 mile view to the North Kaibab Plateau on the far horizon. We tried a ‘tag team’ approach on the Grand Staircase talks with her version first taking visitors on a visual journey across the land and me following with more details and sharing of images and rocks. Worked really well. People liked it and said they learned some new things.
My Friday on Tuesday included time counting visitors in and out of the visitor center and answering questions at the outdoor information area.
Prairie dogs (look closely bottom center)
Mule deer
Then I presented my first evening program of the season, “Where’s the Wildlife?” about habits and habitat of wildlife in Bryce. Was a small group of only ten but went pretty well once I got my laptop hooked up to the park’s system.
Black Witch Moth-6 inches across (phone shot)
Looks like I’ll be working one of my next three days off to help fill in for a sick, not COVID, employee. That nine hours of overtime will make for a really nice pay check and I’m saving for a new camera. After switching lenses to test the wonky auto-focus I am almost convinced it’s a camera body problem. Yet I still ask, is it me or the camera?
In fact those nasty biting gnats eventually chased Ranger Paula and me off Yovimpa Point at the end of our day. But not before I presented one and a half formal Staircase geology talks out of a possible four, talked about the 
But I talked more about fire ecology because the southern view included the smoke from the Mangum fire located about 80 miles away as the Raven flies.
