Day 22

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States: Utah, Arizona
Miles driven: 163
Miles hiked: 0
Slept: In the Bunny mobile, in the pouring rain, on the side of the road inside Grand Canyon National Park (North Rim).
10 words or less: Picnicked with traveling family. Lazy Kanab day. Lost Wave lottery.

Don’t go!

Sunrise rainbow on Hwy 89 near Kanab, UT.

The night before I decided to hit the road. Of course leaving Zion in the dark in a torrential downpour (whew, good timing on our hike) was not fun, I did make it a good stretch before having to pull over into someone’s end of driveway parking area right off highway 89 just East of Kanab. I zonked out in the back of my car for the night and was up at dawn. I drove to the park station where you apply for a lottery to get a permit for one of only ten people allowed to hike in the famous Wave. I’ll make this story short. I went to the wrong place and had 45 minutes to drive the 75 miles back to Kanab before the lottery was drawn in the right location. I got there with 5 minutes to spare and was the last entrant. Unfortunately I lost by one number. Boo!

I ended up hanging out in Kanab, reorganizing the car, stealing wifi from a local park and later from the grocery store while stocking up on food. In the park I met a nice family that were picnicking. We chatted a lot about all the places we’d been or were going to. The two high school age daughters were super sweet and asked a lot of questions. They were so curious about this woman adventuring on her own. I gave them both a good hard stare and told them “when you’re old enough, find time to do what I’m doing. Don’t wait too long. Explore. Go out there on your own and see the world and do what you love. Be safe. Be smart. But get out there and enjoy all this” I motioned to the red rock rising up behind us.

I was sad to take the turn South I needed take to get to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. It meant my journey was turning towards home. The final stretch of adventure. Anxiety had been building in me all day. You’ll see in the photos below that I was stuck at the Arizona border due to a jack-knifed semi that blocked the entire road. I could even see the sign a few cars ahead of me: ARIZONA STATE BORDER. It taunted me. I kept thinking “I don’t wanna go! I wanna stay here!”

The semi was cleared 30 minutes later. The sun set an hour or so after that, the rain started to drop, as did the temperature. Once past the park entrance, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I simply pulled into a little driveway to nowhere – it wasn’t much longer than the length of my car – and passed out as soon as my head was burrowed into my sleeping bag. It rained all night. It got down to about 42 degrees. I froze my ass off when I had to get out to pee at 3am, but at least I didn’t set off the alarm this time.