Week 98: Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Having a "Bryce" time!
Hello friends! Hi, fam! Welcome back to another weekly update. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 98 weeks since we sold our house in Austin, Texas to travel full time in an AEONrv we’ve named Henry — but there you have it.
When we left off last week we had just finished hiking the Taylor Creek Trail in Kolob Canyons at Zion National Park and we were soaking wet from a cold, cold rain. We quickly changed and headed off to find a camp spot for the night and ended up at…
Pyramid Ridge Campground
We found a camp spot at Pyramid Ridge, ate dinner, and zonked. Tuesday morning we woke up to SNOW!! Yeah!
I was so excited I had to go for a walk before breakfast. The air smelled so fresh and clean. I couldn’t stop taking photos!
Just so beautiful! (Note: Jason was done with snow way back in Week 86, but I was happy we got another round!)
Cedar City, Utah
After breakfast we headed to Cedar City, Utah to do allllll the FUN things — that means groceries and laundry, ha!
I was excited to pick up a panini maker at Walmart and sourdough bread at Natural Grocers — more on that later.
Dixie National Forest
After putting groceries away we drove up, up, up into the high plateaus (up to 10,000ft elevation) of Dixie National Forest and soaked in the views:
I spotted a herd of pronghorn and we had to stop for a few photos:
I just love their eyelashes! Random fact of the day: did you know that pronghorn are the fastest land animals in The Western Hemisphere? Yep, its true!
Bryce Canyon National Park
We arrived at Bryce Canyon National Park just as the sun was setting, found our campsite, and zonked again. It was a long day!
Wednesday morning we walked right from camp to catch the free park shuttle — it’s so nice to be able to do that and not have to worry about finding a parking spot. Plus we can leave the van all setup in camp — win/win.
Visitor Center / Park Film
Our first shuttle stop was to the Visitor Center so that I could stamp my sketchbook and watch the park film. Here it is if you’d like to watch it too — it gives a sense of scale that photos just can’t capture:
I also found this 6 minute film that really shows the hoodoos — it’s worth a view if you don’t have time to watch the park film.
We learned that Bryce Canyon National Park has the largest concentration of hoodoos anywhere in the world! From the park website:
Roughly fifty million years ago, the park was a swampy, freshwater lake more than 200 miles long but shallow in depth. Over the course of 25 million years, sediments washed into the low-lying lake from surrounding mountain streams and gradually built up in layers. These layers formed the fragile Claron limestone, the material that makes up the park’s beloved hoodoos, which rise up from the landscape in columns, towers, and bridges. Bryce Canyon National Park has the greatest concentration of hoodoos found anywhere on Earth.
They’re just so amazing!
Bryce Point
While we were at the Visitor Center I asked a ranger where we should go first, and she suggested Bryce Point. So we hopped back on the shuttle and off we went.
This was our first view of Bryce with our own eyes — and WOW!
No words can describe the feeling of seeing this for the first time — I can’t even try.
Hike to Inspiration Point
We decided to do the easy hike along the rim from Bryce Point to Inspiration Point, just 1.5 miles away. I couldn’t stop taking photos — here are just a few faves:
After our hike we picked up the shuttle and then walked back to camp. We were both pretty hungry since we skipped lunch, so I decided to try the new panini maker and made roasted red pepper, hummus, and spinach paninis with that awesome sourdough — they were so good!
I paired the paninis with kale salads and leftover soup for the win. Yum!
Bristlecone Loop
Thursday we headed out to Rainbow Point so that we could hike the Bristlecone Loop Trail. It was cold and really windy — not the best day to be at one of the highest elevations in the park at 9,115 ft, ha!
I’ve always wanted to see Great Basin bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) — and today was the day! I learned that the bristlecone pines in the park are up to 1,800-years-old, and individual pine needles can live to be 40 years-old! Whoa!
The Great Basin bristlecone pines in Bryce Canyon National Park don’t live as long as those in places like Great Basin National Park since the limestone erodes so quickly here at Bryce, while at Great Basin the remains of the famous Prometheus tree is estimated at between 4,700 and 5,200 years old.
And then! We saw one at last, hanging on the edge of the cliff:
The needles have such a distinctive way of growing along the branch, right?
Overlooks Along Bryce Canyon Scenic Drive
After leaving Rainbow Point we stopped at some of overlooks along the road to see what we could see. We saw so many neat hoodoos:
And bridges:
Swamp Canyon Loop
We wanted to get in one more hike before heading back to camp, so we decided to do the 4.5 mile Swamp Canyon Loop. It’s hard to believe that this area used to be a swamp.
From the park website:
Swamp Canyon appears relatively small and sheltered from the overlook, allowing the viewer to develop a more intimate connection with the landscape than some of the grander viewpoints in the park. The Swamp Canyon Loop, which starts at the viewpoint, is more rugged than the Bryce Amphitheater trails, taking hikers into a more forested backcountry hike. There is less signage on this hike and hikers are encouraged to carry a map.
We can confirm that it’s more forested and intimate, but we didn’t have any problems finding the trail.
In fact, we even found more Great Basin bristlecone pines, including this less-tortured specimen:
We also found several Utah serviceberries blooming:
After heading down into the canyon and back up, the trail winds through the forest and sagebrush — it smelled so darn good!
Once we made it back to the top we stopped to look at where we’d been:
What a great hike!
Bryce on Ice is Twice as Nice
We woke up Friday morning to 20 degrees — and a dusting of SNOW!
I was super excited! (Are you surprised?)
We ate breakfast and then hiked over from camp to Sunset Point. There was a just few hints of snow here and there — I was hoping for more, darn.
We didn’t want to go back to camp yet, so we decided to hike over to Sunrise Point and then do the Queens Garden / Navajo Loop Combination.
Queens Garden / Navajo Loop
This is the “must-do” hike at Bryce Canyon and takes you from the rim right down in among the hoodoos. It was an awesome hike!
Some sections of the trail were a little nerve wracking, but luckily it wasn’t too crowded and people weren’t acting crazy.
We spotted some more Great Basin bristlecone pines and cool junipers — love those branches against the sky:
Here’s the E.T. Hoodoo:
The views kept getting better and better:
Next up was the Two Bridges:
Then it was time to hike up the famous switchbacks:
I had researched this hike before we arrived at the park and saw several videos of the famous switchbacks and this video was going through my mind as we hiked up them — it’s too funny! But it does give you a better idea of the scale of the switchbacks:
Too funny!
Now back to the hike — here’s the famous Thor’s Hammer Hoodoo:
Then we hiked back to camp and had more paninis for lunch. It had warmed up to 34 degrees — heat wave, ha!
That’s a Wrap
That’s it for this week — thanks for reading to the end! Which photo is your favorite? I’d love to hear!
Before I sign off, I just had to share a Quote of the Week from Jason:
I never thought I’d spend so much time looking at colorful dirt and rocks.
— Jason Spangler
We’ll be here at Bryce for a few more days — I can’t wait to go on a few more hikes! (And I’m secretly hoping for another round of snow — there’s some in the forecast for later this week.)
We’d love any recommendations for where to head next — J is voting for someplace warmer, ha!
See you next week, and hope you have a nice “Bryce” day! — Lisa, Jason, and Henry-the-Van
So many fabulous pictures! I'm so glad you had a Bryce time (hopefully, there will be more for Jason to appreciate next time, LOL!)
It's awesome that you got some snow! We had gone to Bryce at the end of March one year (Spring Break) and as we arrived at one of the first lookouts it began to snow. It was a bit of a shock, but then it was amazing looking at the contrast of the red rocks with the white of the snow (plus a very moody sky). Somebody offered to get a picture of our family and that became our Christmas card for that year because it was so wonderful. We didn't end up spending very much time there or hiking around much, but it was definitely a wonderful visit and memory.
I'm very far behind on reading about your advantures, but I feel like you've already visited so many of the places we've gone to in the west/southwest. I'll have to check your posts and see if I have any ideas.
So many great hikes! It was great to see all the views! There is no way to pick just one.