Photo albums: Click here for our Canyonlands album, here for Capitol Reef, and here for Bryce Canyon!
Our journey west through southern Utah’s canyon country continued with a visit to Bryce Canyon National Park. Bryce Canyon is known for its hoodoos – huge limestone pillars left standing after rain and freeze-thaw cycles eroded away the surrounding rock. But first, after seven straight nights of camping in Canyonlands and Capitol Reef, we took a short breather by staying in a $55 motel near Bryce Canyon. On Wednesday we did a great day hike through the hoodoos, the 5-mile Peek-a-boo loop. All the hikes in Bryce start at the canyon rim and go down to the canyon floor, then they climb back up to the rim. The Peek-a-boo loop had awesome views of hoodoos, arches, bridges, and some pretty steep switchbacks.
On our climb back up, we had the first snow of our entire trip! It’s kind of surprising that we’ve managed to avoid snow so far, especially since we spent so much time in Alaska and Colorado; apparently we’ve managed to stay just south enough to miss it. Unfortunately we didn’t really realize that Bryce canyon was so high (9000’), and that it turned out to be significantly colder than the rest of southern Utah. That night we camped at the North Campground. We knew it was going to be cold, but 14 degrees overnight was just about our limit! The temperature dropped as low as 18 degrees in Denali, but the 18+ hours of daily sunlight helped us to warm up quickly on that trip. In Bryce in late October, we only got 11 hours of sunlight per day with highs in the low 40s. Needless to say, after one night of freezing our butts off in the tent, we bailed from the campground back to our cheap (and clean!) motel.
We did another long day hike, the 8-mile Fairyland loop. This hike took us through more hoodoos and near a formation called the Sinking Ship.
After this hike, we went to an evening Ranger talk on global warming, followed by an astronomy evening at the Visitor Center. The Rangers had four telescopes set up for some stargazing – we saw Neptune, the moon up close, and various globular clusters and nebulas in the clear black sky.
Our last hike in Bryce Canyon was the short Navajo loop. This hike had a dramatic descent past the Wall Street formation and close-up views of Thor’s Hammer. The weather stayed clear (though cold and windy) for our last few hikes. Bryce was a great trip with some truly amazing geology.
From Bryce we drove out to St. George, UT, in the southwest corner of the state. We are taking a weekend to lay low, stay in a hotel, and get some laundry done. The added benefit of spending this weekend in town is that we get to dodge the weekend national park crowds. On Monday we are headed to Zion National Park, where we are planning some canyon hiking trips – hopefully it’s a little warmer than Bryce!
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