Bryce Canyon

We got a leisurely start the next morning, awaking in the century-old farmhouse rooms we had rented for the night. The most fun part of a bed and breakfast, of course, is the breakfast, so we poured ourselves some coffee and sat down at a table in the big dining room while our host prepared our meal and regaled us of with the sort of local gossip that you can only hear in a small town (apparently a neighbor's bull had been destroying local gardens again and people are mad about it).

Breakfast was eggs, fried bacon, fresh fruit, yogurt with jam, fresh juice, hot coffee, and a stack of pancakes served with creamy butter, orange jam, and homemade buttermilk syrup. 

This was the best breakfast on our entire trip, and it sure beat eating protein bars and coffee in the car.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

To get to Bryce Canyon, we first had to pass through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The national monument, established in 1996, is the first to be managed directly by the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park Service. At 1.8 million acres of land, the monument is among the most remote land in the country and was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.

We stopped in at the visitor's center for a national park passport stamp and spent a few minutes admiring the views. The monument is beautiful, and I'd love to come back to visit it sometime, but I think it's pretty wild. As we were getting our stamps, I overheard a ranger giving very emphatic warnings to a pair of campers about the dangers of the weather at the park.

Rainbow Point

We drove to the far end of the park, climbing from 4000 feet above sea level at the visitor's center to over 9000 feet at Rainbow Point! The altitude hadn't really bothered me much in Salt Lake City or at the other parks, but I did feel a little bit out of breath when hiking up the hills at the highest part of the park. I live at sea level, so any sort of altitude change is really different from what I'm used to.

I'm not sure if it was serendipity that brought us an actual rainbow at Rainbow Point, or if it's named that because rainbows are a common sight there. Either way, it was a pretty weird experience to be standing on a cliff high up above the valley and looking down on the rainbow below us! I don't think I've ever been above a rainbow looking down before.

Over 20 million years (give or take a few), tectonic uplift has raised Rainbow Point above its surroundings. The air was cold here, and the landscape was surprisingly lush.

In contrast to the rocky desert landscape we had spent the past several days in, we found ourselves in a verdant pine forest that reminded me of Colorado.

Yovimpa Point

From Rainbow Point we decided to take the easy and beautiful Bristlecone Trail to the nearby Yovimpa Point. The trail is a gentle 1-mile loop meandering through the high-altitude temperate forest.

Yovimpa Point is the windiest part of the park, and when we reached it, we were buffeted by the strong winds blowing in over the valley below. It was cold, and as we stood at the overlook, the sky began growing darker and darker with threatening rainclouds.

It was the coldest we've been on our trip in Utah so far, and as we walked back along the Bristlecone Loop, it began to rain. Though the temperature was still about ten degrees above freezing (F), I'm pretty sure that it wasn't just water falling from the sky. It definitely felt and sounded like sleet. I'm still holding out for snow! I haven't really gotten to see snow at all since I moved to Thailand over a decade ago.

Ponderosa Canyon

Ponderosa Canyon is named for the towering Ponderosa pines which cover the valley floor. These mammoth trees can be 5 feet in diameter and more than 150 feet tall! Of course, other types of trees grow here as well, including many different types of spruce and fir.  

The canyon views are stunning and give a different perspective of the surrounding landscape.

The most iconic feature at this part of the scenic drive is the Natural Bridge, an arch or "window" created not by water and wind erosion, but rather through thousands of years of ice freezing and thawing in cracks in the stone.

Someday, the arch will inevitably collapse, leaving two newborn hoodoos in its place.

Farview Point

Farview Point definitely lives up to its name. On a clear day, you can see the Navajo Mountain, which is located on the Arizona border 90 miles away! Bryce Canyon is known for its extremely clear air quality and is usually famous for its great visibility. It's also an International Dark Sky Park, and people flock from all around to stargaze.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't exactly clear on the day we visited, but the clouds, mist, fog, and rain made for some really interesting views, and I think the slightly gloomy weather added atmosphere to the landscape.

The Silent City

From the viewpoint at Bryce Overlook, you can gaze down into the valley below to see countless hoodoos, weird geological spires of stone pointing towards the heavens.

Hoodoos, also known as "fairy chimneys", are formed by erosion. Typically, they consist of soft rock capped by harder rock which protects the body of the hoodoos from the elements.

The Silent City is a mythological graveyard of sorts. An ancient and sacred oral tradition of the local indigenous people states that the hoodoos are ancient beings who were cursed to transform into stone by the coyote (a sort of trickster god in many indigenous American stories) as a punishment for their bad deeds. Today, these spires of stone stand silently along the canyon, staring back at the visitors who travel from all around the world to see them every year.

Bryce Canyon was awesome! It's one of the highlights of the trip so far. It's the perfect balance of accessible, well-developed, and impressive. While I suppose it can get busy at times (there's a shuttle service, which usually run at the country's busiest parks such as the Grand Canyon), it didn't feel overcrowded at all. The landscape, with cold, windy pine forests, sprawling canyons, and otherworldly hoodoos was incredibly diverse and stunning, and I'd come back here again in a heartbeat.

Tomorrow, we'll be visiting somewhere I've wanted to visit for years: Zion National Park. But first, we've got a pretty cool overnight glamping experience to look forward to.