Last spring Mark and I took a road trip and visited 3 of Utah’s national parks and 1 of California’s. I’ve already written about Zion, where I spent 2 nights and 1 1/2 days exploring. Tonight’s post will be all about Bryce Canyon and its strange and spectacular hoodoos as photographed above. Those structures, if looked at with a bit of imagination, look like frozen creatures of some sort, don’t they?
Some photos captured the orange and red hues of the canyon really well, some, due to the lighting, did not. Either way, Bryce is absolutely breathtaking because there’s nothing in California that looks like their hoodoos!
We visited Bryce sometime mid to end of April, but there was still some patches of snow here and there. We camped for part of a night in Bryce, but people, in the spring, it is still extremely cold out there. It drops to around 20 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and we were not well prepared for that. Namely because somebody forgot to bring the correct tent for that type of weather. Ahem, Mark. I guess I should’ve checked first, though.
We began our trail somewhere on Sunset or Sunrise Trail. I can’t remember.
We only had a part of a day in Bryce Canyon and so we did over an 8 mile hike with over 1,000 feet elevation gain: The Navajo, Peekaboo, and Queens Trail Loop.
The beginning of the trail was slightly more congested. Yet once we got past these archways that reminded me of the Coyote and the Roadrunner, the trail was pretty much all ours.
We pretty much were looking at various angles of the hoodoos. In the beginning we were looking over them. We were then right under them. Every angle of the hoodoos had me awestruck.
There was some snow here and there. We touched it of course.
This part may have been my favorite section of the hike. The landscape that you see on the Peekaboo Loop is called the Wall of Windows. It made me feel as if I were in some type of other worldly film.
The difference between my camera and Mark’s can be quite stark. His seems to capture the colors a bit better.
Climb up some major hills and look out of this beauty before continuing down/up the trail.
We also stopped to take photos of the tree trunks that looked like they were spiraling towards the sky. This photo credit goes to Mark.
At the tail end of our hike after we’d gone quite a few miles uphill, we encountered humans! We were back with civilization and we had this gnarly, zig zagged uphill path to tackle. We took turns running up it (we only made it up halfway and then decided to walk).
Near the top of that uphill climb.
We finally reached the top where we were overlooking the hoodoos again!
Lucky for us, our campsite was less than a mile away and the showers were, too. Although we had to pay to use the showers, they were the cleanest public showers that I’d ever used in my life!
Bryce Canyon has one of the most unique landscapes in the world. I’d recommend just making time to either drive by it or hike it if you’re ever in the area. It’s only 2 hours away from Zion and the drive from one park to the other is magnificent. Coming from California where everything in our parks are green, blue, or yellow, the striking red and orange hues were something that my eyes definitely feasted upon and never seemed to get used to.
Until next time Bryce Canyon! You were very good to us. I guess I’ll just be dreaming about you from now on.
P.S. Remember to pack out whatever trash you pack in. Mark and I lugged out a trash bag with people’s partially eaten food that they’d left out on one of the slopes. We also chased after a loose trash bag. Moral of this little note is that you should be responsible and take care of our national parks and nature in general.
Hope you all had an awesome Thursday and have an even better Friday! Stay happy and healthy, y’all!
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