All I can say is ...
WOW!!
These national parks in Utah should all be on your "must see" list if you get out to Utah with some time to sightsee.
Not far after you drive into
Bryce Canyon National Park, you come up on Sunrise Point - or Inspiration Point or Sunset Point - all of which open to the "amphitheater" of hoodoos in Bryce Canyon for which this national park is known. The park has a loop road (about 18 miles) from the entrance to the last viewpoint - Yovimpa Point, the highest point in the park (about 9100 ft). As you can see in the pictures, there was still some snow in spots and several of the trails were snow covered. But we were able to hike into the canyon on the Gardens/Navajo Loop trail. Amazing although muddy, slippery, and a bit dangerous on the climb back up. Like everywhere it seems, March is spring-break month so there were a lot more folks out and about than you might expect. Even though it is technically still the winter season at the park it got a bit crowded at times, but nothing like when their peak season starts in May. We were lucky in that we got to drive our car into & through the park; starting Mar 25th, it'll be shuttle buses only, just like Zion.
Factoid: A word on the "hoodoos" (the Paiute Indians pronounce it like "uuudoos"). The legend is that before there were real people, the Legend People lived in the canyon but they were bad and so Coyote turned them into rocks.
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| Bryce Canyon at Sunset |
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| Thor's Hammer |
All of these parks in Utah, as well as Mesa Verde in CO, are part of the Colorado Plateau. Since we hit Santa Fe on Mar 6th, we've probably been at or above 5,000 ft in elevation almost all the time. Hard to believe that at one time, many millions of years ago, this entire area was part of a great inland sea.
Well, next up is Zion National Park.
That's all for now! .....
Dan
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