Beholding Beautiful Bryce

We go to Bryce Canyon every year (since we moved home) to do the Bryce Canyon Half Marathon.

It is a great race... (at least they say- I tried it once and "great!" is not the expletive I would use to describe it).  It is a fun day, and a fun little overnight road trip that we all look forward to.

 We love Bryce, this year we stopped on the side of the road where a bunch of cars were parked because we never had stopped there before and we found the greatest little hike to a cave, a grotto and a waterfall!

We are pretty sure we saw some Europeans taking "European" showers in the waterfall, but I didn't stop long enough to take any pictures...

 It is so beautiful there, and we don't get to spend enough time, but once a year at least we get to go visit for a few hours.  This year it was raining, and we desperately needed the rain with the drought and all the fires, so no one was complaining about the soggy race day.  It also meant that we wouldn't be able to enjoy the vista views of the canyon.....we thought....OH BOY WERE WE WRONG!  Never have I had an experience in nature as amazing as this one.  We stay in Cannonville at the end of the race, at the bottom of the valley.  13 miles up the road (up about 1000 feet in elevation) is the canyon road where you can look out over the canyon and down to Cannonville.  So as we are ascending the hill we notice that the clouds are really really low and then we realized we are going to be entering those clouds.

 Thanks to George's "disability" we have a free lifetime pass into the National Parks (I don't know why they think not being able to hear the National Parks is worthy of letting the deaf in for free, but since it is the only perk we have found so far, we aren't complaining.)
We thought we would see if we could beat the clouds and catch a quick glimpse of the canyon before we went home.  It was awe inspiring. It was a gift from God to be able to experience this phenomena.

We were quite quickly enveloped by these clouds and couldn't see anything but each other.  It was just amazing.  Even when it started to rain again, we didn't want to leave.  The kids all got in the car and Kyle and I stood in the parking lot in silence just smelling the rain from inside of the clouds it was coming from.  It is a different smell when it completely surrounds you and it is...there isn't a word...surreal I guess.

Our spirits were lifted.  We are better people because of it, 

and will never forget our little trip almost to Heaven.