We Visit the Utah Canyon Parks- Bryce Canyon and Zion

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Arriving at Bryce Canyon N.P. around lunchtime, we found a picnic area and had some lunch while we sorted out how we were going to view this park. The Bryce Amphitheater, located near the park entrance and visitor’s center, has the two most popular attractions- Sunrise and Sunset Points.

View of the canyon

A longer 18-mile drive into the park features various eroded fins, windows, and hoo doos. Our desire was to position ourselves near our final Utah park, Zion, N.P., so we would be able to spend a good portion of the next day there, and avoid the rush of people that always came later in the day.

Multicolored hoo doos

We felt that the longer drive into the park would take too much time and interfere with tomorrow’s goals, so we returned to the visitor’s center to collect the stamp and view the exhibits, before heading to the Bryce Amphitheater.

Our first stop for viewing the canyon was Sunset Point.

Hoo doos at Sunset Point

We hiked a short distance to the canyon rim and were blown away by the formations.

Typical hoo doo

We saw fins- narrow rows of rock that have been eroded into thin walls, windows- holes created in fin walls by frost-wedging, and hoo doos- enlarged windows with collapsed tops rendering the limestone pillars into bulbous spires.

A shortlived, skinny hoo  doo

Unfortunately, being there in the middle of the day, light didn’t paint the canyon walls and formations with color that is said to not be reflected, but rather emanate from the rock itself.

Another overlook in Bryce Amphitheater

Our next stop was Sunrise Point, and like its sister, had beautiful formations that, judging from its eastward orientation, must be quite beautiful in the early morning sunlight.

View from Sunrise Point

These views were very beautiful and inspiring, and we wished that we had more time to hike the trails and drive to some of the other formations. We hiked back to the car, left the park, and began making our way towards Zion, hoping to find lodging not too far from the park’s entrance.

We had been able to find a room at a Best Western in Mt. Carmel, UT, just a few miles outside the entrance to Zion N.P.,

Our last Utah park

and had a delightful evening having drinks on our patio while watching a couple of young men play 3 rounds of golf on the shortened course (or maybe we lost count from too many drinks!).

Checkerboard Dome

The next morning we got up and headed into the park only to be greeted by a closed ranger entrance station. All the time we were in Utah we kept wondering what time it was. The map said we were in the Mountain Time Zone which is one hour behind our normal time.

Coming into Zion

However, our cell phones displayed a local time that was 2 hours behind CDT. We asked a couple of people if the area observed daylight savings time, and were told that it did. But that should only put us 1 hour behind our regular time. Anyway, we were up and at em’ early and seemed to be hitting the parks 1 hour early. We drove into Zion and stopped at the Checkerboard Dome overlook. This turns out to be a major park feature with the scoriated lines displaying a checkerboard pattern.

Not much road to share!

We moved on and started a winding descent toward the bottom of the canyon. We had a couple of tunnels to go through, the first being only about 80-90 yards long.

Colorful rocks

However, the second tunnel had been blasted through a large mountain and was very dark, narrow, and about 1.5 miles long. It seemed we would never get out of it. After this tunnel the road started a steep descent to the canyon floor with lots of switchbacks. Jane started hyperventilating. After we arrived at the bottom, we made our way to the Human History Museum which is devoted to the peoples who lived along this canyon.

We left the museum and made our way to the visitor’s center where we, guess what? That’s right, we collected the stamp and viewed the exhibits. Zion has a shuttle system with buses that take visitors to destinations throughout the park. Driving your car through these areas is prohibited, so we

Along the drive to the bottom

hopped a shuttle which took us to various highlights along the canyon drive.

Interesting striations

The cool thing about Zion is that it is the only canyon park where one does his sightseeing along the canyon bottom. At all of the other canyon parks, viewing was limited to the canyon rim, except along certain sections where access to the bottom was allowed and the viewer had the fortitude to get to the bottom.

View from the bottom

Our shuttle brought us back to the visitor’s center where we decided to find a picnic area for lunch. We decided to leave the park after we finished our lunch and head for a 3-day jaunt to nearby Las Vegas.

Really big rocks!

This would give us a break before we finished our park quest with the Grand Canyon N.P and Petrified Forest N.P. As we were leaving Zion, we noticed that a sign had been placed at the park entrance informing visitors that the park was full and cars should be parked in the nearby town of Springdale.

The magic of water working on rock

Visitors could then take a shuttle into the park. We stopped at the park entrance to take our pictures at the entrance sign and found the adjacent parking lot filling up with cars and people hiking into the park.

Beautiful landscapes

And this was a Tuesday afternoon! We left the park and started making our way toward Las Vegas. After traveling about 20 miles, Capt. Larry broke the silence by noting that the Las Vegas trip would put us in the Grand Canyon on the weekend, and it was likely much more popular than Zion.

The Virgin River carves the landscape

 

Thinking the same thing, Jane agreed that we should do Las Vegas another time and hit our last two parks during the week, to avoid an onslaught of visitors. We turned around and headed for Kanab, UT where we found a room for the night. This would position us to visit the Grand Canyon’s North Rim the following day. We had dinner Nedra’s Too, a famous Mexican restaurant that was frequented by many movie stars while shooting in the area, and then turned in for the night.