USA Road Trip – A Trip to Bryce Canyon

Written by Kim

As we entered the park someone said this place is magical and they were right! Bryce Canyon National Park, a sprawling reserve in southern Utah, is known for crimson-colored hoodoos, which are spire-shaped rock formations. The park’s main road leads past the expansive Bryce Amphitheater, a hoodoo-filled depression lying below the Rim Trail hiking path. Bryce is made largely of limestone and is the smallest National Park in Utah – about 1/3 the size of Zion. It’s hard to see the grandeur in the pictures but we will share anyhow.

Bryce is the highest canyon in The Grand Staircase which is an immense sequence of sedimentary rock layers that stretch south from Bryce through Zion, and into Grand Canyon. Bryce actually isn’t a natural canyon by definition because a river didn’t form it. It was originally a pool of water; however, this area has 170 days a year there is freezing and thawing in the same day which resulted in frost wedging and erosion created the spires, hoodoos and canyon.

The park was named for Ebenezer Bryce a Scottish Mormon who brought his family to the area in the early 1900s. In 1916, Reuben C. (Ruby) Syrett brought his family to the wilds of Southern Utah, establishing a ranch near the present site of Ruby’s Inn. A few weeks after his arrival, another nearby rancher told Ruby of the canyon called Bryce. Ruby and his family made a visit to the canyon rim and then began to tell people of the canyon’s beauties, but they also became hosts to its visitors. They built a lodge that still exists today along with a village including stores, campground and western dinner show.

We did some hiking. Our original plan was to hike down into the canyon; however, we met a couple our age as we were planning to begin the trail who had just come up. They encouraged us to have hiking poles if we wanted to do the steep incline (about 625 ft) to avoid injury. It scared me a bit and then he to,d us he was a sports medicine physician so we decided to stick to easier hikes on the rim. We still got beautiful views and 10,000+ steps so it was a good day.

We sat on a log bench to rest a few minutes and some random guy came up behind us telling us we needed to Venmo him $20 for sitting on his bench. We laughed and moved on. We kept encountering him with the $20 request each time we passed him so we started chatting and found he was from Hohokus, NJ. Small world.

Dan and Jen were doing a number of parks on their way to LA to see their son performing. We weren’t surprised they were from NJ based on his antics. We told them we would include them in our blog as payment for sitting on their bench. 😀😜😂🤪

Hoodoos and arches can be found everywhere. The rock formations from erosion are so unique

Bristle cone pines are long-lived and highly resilient to harsh weather and bad soils. They look dead and live forever. The oldest of this species is found in California and is projected to be more than 4,800 years old,

The road exiting was called Red Rock Canyon and included beautiful red formations and arches

Good night from Beaver – home of Robert LeRoy Parker aka Butch Cassidy. Tomorrow we head to Moab to see Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.