The ranger at the station was very helpful And kind and had good advice about the trail. We had to stop here to pick up our permits here. They give you a few wag bags but not enough for the full hike but we brought our own. She said you could use the wag bags more than once but I'm not doing that.
I must say that this was our second stop to pick up our permits. We tried at the BLM office in Kanab. We were staying in Kanab that night in an Airbnb before we started the hike the next day. The woman at the BLM office would not give us our permits. She said we needed to go to the Paria Contact station which is about 45 minutes outside of Kanab. I was not happy because we wanted to make an early start of the hike so that we could beat the heat of the day. I pleaded with the woman there but she was not helpful at all. She insisted that we had to go to the contact station even though when I made the reservation I choose the option to pick up at the Kanab BLM OR the Paria Contact station. I'm pretty sure that in the reservation online the button I clicked just said "or". I did notice in the email confirmation I got if you read it very thoroughly it says "or" because you have to pick up at the contact station in the summer and at the BLM in the winter. But they literally just print your reservation right in front of you at the contact station which they easily could have done at the BLM office. But the lady there was totally unsympathetic and was happy to tell us to make the 1.5 hour round trip to go to the Paria Contact station so they could print it there. And we were lucky it worked there. The ranger there said that she hadn't had service all day and that it just started working when we got there. And I guarantee that they have great service at the Kanab BLM office.
Government run agencies are so caught up in beauraracy they can't figure out how to print a piece of paper to help out one of their patrons. It is ridiculous.
The hike was epic and I totally recommend despite the horrible customer service at the Kanab BLM office.