May 21 – Queen’s Garden Trail

We sort of blew it on the timing today. When we woke up we had another clear blue sky. We decided to have a lazy morning and do a late hike and maybe see the late afternoon sun on the hoodoos.

Just as we decided to go the clouds started coming in and part way through the hike it was pretty solid.

Today we did the Queen’s Garden trail which runs 5 km through the main part of the Canyon that everybody sees, from Sunset Point to Sunrise Point.

You first go have to down the switchbacks of the Navajo Trail that we used to access the Peekaboo Trail the other day.

This is a Google Earth view of that section

We still had some sun. This is just before we went down the narrow switchbacks.

Once we were at the bottom we turned on to the Queen’s Garden Trail. The first part was very flat and kind of boring as we looped around to get to the interesting stuff.

First we had to go through a narrow crack that was probably blasted in a wall. It was just too convenient to be natural.

More high walls to stare at.

You take a short side trail to go and see the Queen, high up on the left in the picture below.

Queen Victoria surveys her domain.

What the Queen gets to look at.

Moving on we went through the first of three tunnels.

Some switchbacks to another tunnel.

They skimped a bit on the height.

The view back up to Sunset Point.

More switchbacks.

We passed some slots where you could see back down to the bottom.

It was kind of busy down there.

It was sunny off to the east.

The final push to the top at Sunrise Point.

This hike would have been better with a clear sunny blue sky but it was still pretty good. I left out a lot of pictures of hoodoos because I am sure we are all getting a bit overloaded.

No sunset pictures today.

We have been trying to get to as many of the places that we want to see inside the national park before the upcoming busy Memorial Day weekend. When we checked in the campground host said they are full for the long weekend. We will explore more places outside the park then.