One week ago tonight, my lucky streak of 2 1/2 years ran out, and I came down with COVID. We were hiking in the late afternoon and my back was really sore. We got back to the campground and I took a nice hot shower. After I got back to the van, I was still hot - with a fever. A sudden fever and headache, with body aches. We had packed a test, and it showed positive for COVID. One of the things we like about our camper van is that we are generally isolated from people. However, two days earlier, we had stopped at a grocery store and I suspect that's where I was exposed. On previous trips, we always masked to go to the store, but case rates were down, and we got lazy on this one. While we are still isolated from others in the van, we are very close to each other, and Elena came down with it less than 36 hours later. We adjusted the final couple of weeks of our schedule to reduce the duration and difficulty of hikes.
Recap of the past week:
Pre-COVID we hiked at Cathedral Gorge State Park in NV. Very interesting eroded rock layers. Our favorite activity was finding the many hidden passages in the rocks.
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Sunset at Cathedral Gorge State Park - on our 32nd Wedding Anniversary
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Playing in the hidden slots at Cathedral Gorge
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Post COVID: We then spent two night at Snow Canyon State Park in UT, where we hiked on the petrified sand dunes and along the butterfly trail, then down into some lava tubes. These were geologically young tubes - only about 27,000 years old. The white and red sandstone contrast the dark black lava rocks nicely.
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At Snow Canyon State Park
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More Snow Canyon pics including Elena at the Butterfly Rock and entering a Lava Tube
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We next spent a night at the campground in Zion NP. We've been there before and decided to skip the most heavily visited areas. It's like a Disney Park there, with parking lots overflowing and long wait lines for the shuttles. We hiked and bicycled along the trails from our campsite.
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From our campsite in Zion NP
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The next morning, we drove through the tunnel and planned to do the overlook hike. When we emerged from the tunnel, the parking lot was full and there were cars parked all along the road. We drove past for a mile or two and decided to turn around and try one more time. As we approached the biggest parking lot, a bighorn sheep had come to the edge of the road in the opposite lane. Traffic was stopped, and we turned into the parking area and saw a freshly opened space just for us. Score! The overlook hike is very nice - not too far or steep, with a great view at the end.
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From the Zion Overlook
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We headed for Kanab where we had a campground at the Best Friends Sanctuary. They are a very big animal rescue group with hundreds of acres of land for the rescued animals to live. Just before we got there, we stopped at the Sand Caves - an old sand mining area high on a cliff. It was quite the rock scramble to make it up there, but we did it.
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Sand Caves near Kanab, UT
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The next few days were planned to be spent hiking Wirepass Slot Canyon, visiting the old Paria town site, and applying for a permit to hike to The Wave. Instead, we lucked into a rim edge campsite at the Grand Canyon North Rim, and we headed that way. We were last at the north rim in 2007, and I took a really cool photo of Elena. We found the spot and recreated the photo and added me this time. The north rim only gets about 10% of the visitation of the south rim, so it's much more enjoyable. There were closing for the season a few days after we left, as they are over 8,000 feet in elevation and can get heavy snow.
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2007 Photo of Elena at the Grand Canyon North Rim
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2022 Photo of Paul & Elena at the Grand Canyon North Rim
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Here are a few more highlights from the north rim of the Grand Canyon.
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Grand Canyon North Rim
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We headed east toward Page, AZ. On the way, we drove down to the Colorado River at historic Lees Ferry. We hiked around along the beach and watch some raft trips preparing to launch. This is where we launched from in 2013 when we did an 8 day, 277 mile rafting trip all the way through the Grand Canyon. Bebop enjoyed wading in the river.
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Lees Ferry near Page, AZ
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There are several Antelope Canyon tours around Page, AZ. The Antelope Valley is Navajo land, and there are several places where the wash has cut deep slot canyons in the sandstone. We've toured both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon before. I paddled through Lake Powell once for many miles to the point where the Antelope Wash enters the lake. This time we took a tour to a section above Upper Antelope Canyon called Canyon X. The name comes from the X you see if you look up as you enter the canyon. It was another beautiful slot canyon and our native guide was excellent. Very knowledgeable and pleasant.
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Antelope Canyon X
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We are in Flagstaff, AZ for the night. COVID has been a wild ride. The first two days were fever, headache, and muscle pain. Then the fever subsided and we were just tired. Then our noses started flowing like fire hoses. Finally, the flow slowed, and now we are mostly just tired by late afternoon. Our modified plans helped us keep enjoying things without overdoing it. And we've been able to isolate ourselves from others by not going indoors anywhere - our camper van is a good quarantine chamber. Bebop is doing fine and has been taking good care of us.
- Paul
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