Day 43 - Cedar City, UT

This morning we ran some errands after wandering around the historic Cedar City. Late this afternoon, we ventured up to Cedar Breaks National Monument. It was only about 25 miles from Cedar City but the road climbed about 4,500'. This road was one of the possible routes to Bryce Canyon. I think that I will take one of the other routes tomorrow.

We headed up to not only see the amphitheater but also an astronomy program which starts after sundown. There was some hesitation to go there at all on my part as we were able to see the smoke from the Brian Head fire that just started today. In the pano, you can see how close the fire is to Cedar Breaks. Needless to say, they cancelled the star gazing event due to reduced visibility from the smoke. Both of these pictures were taken from the scenic overlook next to the visitor's center. One looking north (above) and the other looking southwest (on the right). The second photo was HDR which is why the reds seem to be oversaturated. BTW, that really is snow in the shadows just left of center in the picture.

After leaving Cedar Breaks, we took a short hike to a view point looking south towards Zion National Park and a couple of examples of bristlecone pines. I had seen the really old ones in the White Mountains between California and Nevada. But these are more accessible but about 1/3 the age. Pretty impressive.

This is the 1,600 year old tree at the end of the trail. Small compared to something like a Sequoia redwood. For scale, you can see the walkway to the left. The railing of the walkway was falling over probably from a lot of runoff from the winter snow. You can see the size of the tree.

And this is the view south towards Zion. The largest feature is the Temple Mount and you can see the Narrows to the left. At this point, these features are about 50 miles away. There was a cool sign showing the differant layers cooresponding to the Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon and Bryce/Cedar Breaks.