Our second day, we drove with the Laffertys to Escalante and went on a hike in the Petrified Forest State Park. A Sego Lilly.
Tal, offering scale.
Trace, turning into a hiker. Now if we can just get him to walk the two blocks to church!
On a petrified log with cousin Ally.
On the way back we took a 2-hour detour to see the Hell's Backbone Bridge. I've never forgotten my Grandma Ruth Hale's description of the bridge in her play "The Educated Heart" and I'd always wanted to see it. It was 2 hours of a monotonous water-board dirt road through a pine forest. Then I started to notice through the pine trees that across the way there were these sheer white rock cliffs that dropped down so far you could not see the bottom. I thought "Oh that's the exciting part over there." Then we turned a corner and I realized that it was a box canyon (Box Death Hollow) and we'd been separated from the same sheer drop off by just a fringe of trees. Then the trees opened up and we could see the bridge, which was only about 15-feet across but a half-a mile down below it! You could not see the bottom. There is a reason the WPA workers called it Acid Death Drops. One false move on that job and it would have been bye-bye forever.
We didn't get very good pictures because as I got out Jack got out too and I had to jump back in and tell Clint to drive on. It was too dangerous. As we drove away my heart was pounding like we'd been in a near car crash! Phew, that was exciting!
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