The Toadstools

We had planned on camping last night but thanks to the rain and high wind from the thunderstorms we instead decided to stay at a motel in Kanab, Utah.  Since we were in Kanab, we figured we would head over to the BLM visitor center in the morning and sign up for the daily lottery to try and win a spot for a hike to "The Wave" (google "The Wave" and you'll see how cool this area is).  Basically, because The Wave is in a designated wilderness area, access is strictly controlled by the BLM.  Each day they allow only 20 people to hike to The Wave.  10 of these spaces are reservable online 4 months ahead of time and 10 spaces are given away each day in a "lottery".  So, basically, you go to the visitor center in the morning and sign up, then wait as they literally conduct a lottery using bingo balls.  You are assigned a number that corresponds to one of the bingo balls, and they spin the balls in a cage.  If your number pops up, you get to do the hike the following day.  There were 108 people signed up for the lottery the day we were there, so needless to say, our chances weren't very good and we didn't get a spot.  Thankfully, though, there are plenty of other cool things to see and do in the area and we already had a backup plan in place.

After the lottery let-down, we hopped back in the truck and headed east towards Page, Arizona.  Along the way was the first hike in our back-up plan, an easy walk to an area known as "The Toadstools".  This certainly was an easy walk, much less strenuous than most of the hikes we've done on the trip so far.  It was  not quite a mile from the parking area to the Toadstools area, and it was pretty much a flat hike.  In case you're wondering, a "toadstool", according to the park literature, is "a spire-like feature with a boulder perched atop a pedestal rock, like a mushroom.  It forms when softer rock erodes away, leaving a column sheltered from the wind and water."  We had a great time exploring the Toadstool area and as the norm has been the past few days, we had beautiful clouds which made for great pictures!