On Monday March 16th my sister and I woke up early and headed 30 minutes east to the Paria Ranger Station. The one hike I really wanted to do while I was in this part of the world this time was to see the Wave. This spectacular sandstone formation is in the Paria Canyon/Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness. Because the BLM has deemed it to be a fragile area, they only allow 20 people per day to visit it. You can get permits up to 4 months in advance, but I missed my reservation window when I started planning this trip. So the only other way is to get permits is in person via a lottery system. If you arrive at 8:30 am at the station, submit an application, and wait until 9:00 am for the bingo-like lottery, and if your number is drawn, you get a permit to hike to the Wave the next day. Well, Monday morning there was a record 63 people there at the station hoping to get one of 10 permits available that day! Needless to say we didn't get in. But we found out that for every consecutive morning you return trying to get a permit you'll get another ball in the bingo pot so your chances increase greatly the more days you go back. Well, we had all week to try, so we vowed to go back. It doesn't take that much time out of your morning and there's plenty of other amazing places to go hiking in the area so it wasn't much of a bother.
So after the failed permit attempt, we headed to the nearby short hike to the Paria Toadstools or Rimrocks. I did this hike with Mindi back in 2004 but didn't get many photos because of my broken camera. So I happily returned to show this interesting area to my sister. The toadstools are all gathered in an amphitheatre of sorts next to some taller cliffs. It is a fun area to explore and we both enjoyed ourselves.
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