Crazy Happy Lifestyle: Day 12 - Bryce Canyon National Park

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Posted from: Virgin, UT - Zion River Resort RV Park

Miles driven: 246

Total trip miles: 2,473

Total national parks visited: 8

Today we drove through Zion to get to Bryce Canyon National Park. In the 30's, they built the Mt Carmel Highway to help visitors more easily get from Zion to Bryce.

Ho hum...more rocks and stuff. But really the color was amazing and again, the pictures don't do it justice.

The most amazing part about the highway is the tunnel through a mountain that is over one mile long. Two way traffic in modern day cars is a tight fit, especially when a truck passes a truck. I kept waiting for our mirror to get picked off. But it didn't. (I think holding my breath, tensing up and cringing gave us better odds.)

It was 84 degrees at 6:15 am when we left our campground. On the way to Bryce, we hit 53 degrees. Bryce Canyon is typically much cooler than Zion.

Two hours later, we arrived at Bryce Canyon NP.

The big attraction at Bryce is the Hoodoos. They are the colorful rock spires and there are hiking trails to hike down in them. I'll be honest and say that our first impression of the park left us thinking it would be a short visit. The bugs were awful. You could not stop for a minute or they would swarm you. Even with our most powerful backwoods bug spray, it was irritating. It was also hot and I read the sign wrong saying that the ranger program was at the Sunset viewing point... Not the Sunrise viewing point. So we hiked a mile to Sunset. Grr. It was getting hot.

Sunset is where you can start your hike into the Hoodoos on what is called Wall Street. This is the part I really wanted to see, and I thought the kids would love it. They did. You go down this step switchback trail until you get to a narrow canyon. Here is part of the trail.

Here is the part of the trail that continues past what you could see in the last picture. Wow.

This is the narrow canyon. It was nice and cool down here.

And this tall tree was growing down here. Crazy.

Matt liked this service station that used to operate within the park. It operated as late as 1988 when it finally shut down due to adequate fuel stations right outside the park.

And of course, the kids worked through the booklet to get their Junior Ranger badges. We have gotten pretty good and finding nice shady picnic spots to eat and work on the booklets.

When we got back to the campground, we had to do a reality check. The fact was that we had dirty laundry and the campground had laundry facilities. So, off I went with a good book.