Red Canyon Hike and Bike

Staying for a week in one location allowed us to pick the best weather days to do the longest hikes.  We had several days of rain that slowed us down a little.   But we still got to explore the Red Canyon just outside the town of Panguitch. 
There are multiple parking lots and view points along this section of highway because it is such a beautiful red color that people just have to stop and gawk.  There would be too many accidents if people had to continue to drive while looking at the wonderful views through this canyon.

 We stopped and did some hiking on one of the trails close to the visitor center. 

We have found that when you hang out with the same person 24/7, you start picking up their habits.  Mark is usually the tree-climber, but this tree was easy enough for even Denisa to climb. 




Of course, it helped Denisa's tree climbing skills that the tree was horizontal to the ground instead of vertical.












We also rode our bikes down the 10-mile paved trail that winds its way through Red Canyon.

Red Canyon is about 15 miles from the entrance of Bryce Canyon National Park, but it has some hoodoos as well.  There are great views of the red cliffs and rock formations along the bike trail.  We also stopped for a picture beside one of the two tunnels that the cars pass under on the highway.

It's a very smooth bike trail, and we loved having our own path.  But if we are allowed to complain, we didn't like that the bike path was right next to the very busy section of Highway 12 part of the time.

Also, Denisa will always complain when the majority of the bike trail seems to go uphill.  She's not too proud to say that she walked her bike up more than one hill in that ten miles.

After much pedaling, we made it to the summit of this highway.  This must be one of the luckiest summits in the world!

Looking at those clouds, the summit wasn't lucky for us.  It started raining very soon after we passed the summit.  We hadn't brought our rain gear, so we were glad that the worst of the storms went west of us.  But we had to stop to take cover from the rain for a while, then headed back down the wet path.

The temperature had fallen with the raindrops, so Denisa was glad to have a jacket for the ride home.  Mark didn't have a jacket, so it was a cold ride back for him.  Proving that he is a very talented biker and multi-tasker, he took all these photographs while keeping both his tires on the path.

Denisa was also glad to get to enjoy the down-hill ride back to the car.  After all the complaining about the pedaling to get up that ten-mile hill, it was certainly fun to coast back down.  We seldom had to pedal on the ride back!  Suddenly this was Denisa's favorite bike path!

It was the fastest return trip back to the car ever, and the skies had even cleared up.

Denisa wrestled the camera away from Mark, just to prove that he was also on this bike ride.

After the rain showers during our bike ride, we continued to get rain all evening and night.  More rain fell the next day and we spent that day inside the motor home.  That was the same day that 12 people died in a flash flood in a small town south of us, and 7 hikers died in a slot canyon at Zion National Park.  It was the deadliest weather day ever in the state of Utah. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the people that died that day.