Bryce Canyon National Park

It's May 1 and my last post was a week ago!  A lot has happened since then.  We have visited four National Parks and a Utah state park.  I need to catch up on the blog!

It's a short drive from Zion NP to Brice Canyon NP and a number of people we came across at Bryce had either just been to Zion or were going there next.  Bryce is similar to Grand Canyon in that the main road is at the top of a canyon and you are looking down into the colorful canyon (unlike Zion where you mostly stay at the bottom of the canyon and look up at the walls and cliffs around you).  But Bryce is much smaller than Grand Canyon and in many ways it's more accessible and intimate; maybe a little less intimidating.  Hikes from the rim to the valley are only a change of 500 to 1,000 feet rather than the 5,000 feet of Grand Canyon.

Here's the requisite park entrance sign.

We stayed in an RV park just outside the NP.  The "regular season" had not started yet for the park and some services (like a bus from the visitor center to the various viewing spots and trail heads) had not started yet.  Similarly for the RV park. They have an outdoor pool but it was not filled yet.  But we were allowed to use the indoor pool of the hotel that runs the RV park and we took advantage of that a few times.  We had wonderful weather but it had snowed the week before we were there.

Here are the typical views into the canyon.  There really is only one side of the canyon.

The interesting thing about Bryce is the many "hoodoos" that have been formed by erosion.  They take lots of wonderful shapes and some are named, like "the Sentinel," "Queen Victoria," and "Thor's Hammer."

We took the Queen's Garden trail down from the rim. It was a descent of just over 300 feet and not very strenuous.

This gave us a chance to get up close and personal with the hoodoos.  We also saw some mule deer in the valley part.

After a relatively flat trail through the valley we returned to the rim using a steeper trail, with lots of switchbacks.  This gave us a chance to see "Thor's Hammer" and the "Three Princesses."  Thor's Hammer shows up on a lot of postcards and posters of Bryce.

We probably have hundreds of images of Thor's Hammer (thank goodness we are not using film!), trying to get the "perfect" shot.

We had one rather "extended" day where we saw both the sun rise and sun set.  The canyon faces east and so the sun rise light was better than the sun set (we've made a point of seeing sunsets at Sedona and the Grand Canyon and found them uninspiring and the same was true for Bryce).

I guess people get caught up in how the light moves across the hoodoos, but for some reason the conditions were not optimal for us.

Another "extended" event happened the first night we where there.  A ranger conducted a talk about astronomy and light pollution and how it impacts viewing the stars and also nocturnal animals.  We then went to the parking lot and were able to use telescopes owned by the park (one had a diameter of 15 inches).

We also took a trail that stayed at the top of the canyon.  The elevation was 9,100 feet and we had great views into the canyon.  We saw the remains of a tree that was estimated to have been 1,600 years old.

 Yes, that's snow in various places.

One day we took an excursion east of the park.  We saw a small waterfall.

 Also, about 20 miles east of Bryce (driving along highway 12, a "scenic byway") we came across a huge peak rising a thousand or so feet above the road.  This peak had been climbed by John Wesley Powell when he explored this area (he was the first to take a boat down the Colorado river as well).  We learned that this is an area rich in dinosaur fossils.

We also learned some things that tied together some of the parks we have seen in this part of the country.  They are all part of the "Colorado Plateau," but they have had different amounts of erosion.  The more erosion that has taken place, the older the rocks that are visible.  Beth modified some information we had and produced the following chart for Matthew to share with his class during our weekly Skype call.

Makes sense, right?  If you would like a more detailed explanation, send us some email!