Bryce Canyon National Park
We parked the camper at Ruby's RV Park and Campground, which is about as convenient as it gets for visiting Bryce Canyon. Located just a mile from the park entrance, Ruby's is practically a small town in itself with restaurants, general stores, diesel, and just about everything else a traveler might need. The best part for us was that it is also a shuttle stop for the park. That meant we could leave the truck parked and let someone else deal with hunting for parking. At 8,000 feet above sea level, it is also a pretty good place to escape the heat. In fact, it was a chilly 45 degrees inside the camper when we woke up in the morning. Brrrr! Apparently, summer had already packed its bags and left town.
Bryce Canyon, despite the name, is not really a canyon. It is actually a giant collection of amphitheaters filled with hoodoos, which are tall, skinny towers of orange, pink, red, and white rock. They look like somebody built a giant city out of wet sand, then left it outside for a few million years. Rain, snow, ice, and a whole lot of time did the rest. The result is one of the strangest and most colorful landscapes we have seen anywhere.
After arriving, we drove the 18 mile road to Rainbow Point to start our touring. At 9,115 feet, it is the highest point in the park and provides a pretty impressive view of the surrounding country. You can see for miles in every direction, although the temperature seemed to be making sure we did not get too comfortable standing around admiring it. This end of the park is about 1,000 feet higher than the northern end and we could definitely tell. It was beginning to feel less like southern Utah and more like somebody had accidentally left the refrigerator door open.
The main attraction in the park is Bryce Amphitheater, which can be viewed from Bryce Point, Inspiration Point, Sunset Point, and Sunrise Point. From the rim, thousands of hoodoos are packed together below like a gigantic crowd of stone people. The colors range from bright orange to pink, white, and everything in between. It is one of those places where you take a picture, look at the picture, and realize the picture does not really do it justice.
We hiked the Queen's Garden Trail down into the amphitheater and connected it with the Navajo Loop Trail for the climb back to the rim. This is one of the most popular hikes in the park and it is easy to see why. From the rim, the hoodoos look impressive. Down among them, they become huge. The trail winds between formations that tower overhead, through narrow passages and along walls of colorful rock.
The Queen's Garden section was a fun walk down, although everything that goes downhill eventually has to be dealt with again. The Navajo Loop provided the return trip, complete with steep switchbacks that gave us plenty of opportunities to question our decision making. The hike was about 3 miles with roughly 625 feet of elevation gain. Apparently, the hoodoos were not the only things being carved out of the landscape. Our legs got a little carving too.
Our favorite hike in the park was the out and back trail to Tower Bridge. The 3 mile round trip included about 760 feet of elevation gain, which was enough to remind us that we were hiking and not simply strolling around taking pictures of rocks. The middle section was probably the prettiest part of the trail, with beautiful white and light pink hoodoos that seemed to be getting far less attention than their flashy orange cousins down in Bryce Amphitheater.
The trail was also much less crowded than the Queen's Garden and Navajo Loop, which made a big difference. We could stop whenever we wanted, take pictures, and actually enjoy the scenery without feeling like we were part of a slow moving hiking parade. By the time we reached Tower Bridge, we had decided that Bryce Canyon has no shortage of spectacular scenery, and sometimes the quieter trails are the ones that steal the show.
We also took a short drive over to Red Canyon, just a few miles west of Bryce Canyon along Utah Highway 12. The drive itself is worth the trip, especially when you pass through the two red rock tunnels along the highway. Red Canyon is part of the Dixie National Forest and feels a little like Bryce Canyon's smaller, less crowded cousin. It has the same colorful rock formations and hoodoos, but with more trees and considerably fewer people trying to take the same picture.
We hiked about 3 miles combining the Pink Ledges Trail and the Hoodoo Trail. The trails took us right among the red rock formations, giving us another chance to see the hoodoos up close. By this point in the trip, we were becoming pretty familiar with hoodoos. Fortunately, they seem to have an unlimited supply of them around here.
Here is a link to an IMovie with more of our pictures from this stop.
Bryce Canyon turned out to be a great stop on our Utah adventure. The scenery is spectacular, the hoodoos are unlike anything we have seen, and there are enough trails to keep us busy without having to drive for hours every day. Red Canyon was a great bonus, and Tower Bridge ended up being our favorite hike of the bunch. Throw in a campground where we could get supplies and catch the shuttle within a mile of the park, and Bryce Canyon was hard to beat. The only thing we could have done without was the 45 degree wake up call. But I suppose you cannot have everything.
This featured blog entry was written by Boilersfrom1989 from the blog Boilersfrom1989 Travel Blog.
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