Bryce Canyon

We were a little apprehensive arriving in Bryce Canyon National Park, since we didn't have camping reservations and we were told that the first-come first-serve campsites filled quickly. We got an early start from Zion and headed north to Bryce.  Upon arriving at the campground, we discovered that the major loop of first-come first-serve campsites was inexplicably closed. We grabbed one of the remaining sites and set up camp.  Only about 30 mins or so later, the campground was full, so we were glad we got a nice spot in the shade.

Bryce is famous for its thousands upon thousands of natural rock spires, most of them concentrated in what is called the Bryce Amphitheater.  These spires are known as "hoodoos", and they were formed as ice and rain eroded the limestone and sandstone cliffs that once stood there.  You can see the layers of orange and white colored rock everywhere in the park.

We decided to do as much as possible on our first day, as thunderstorms were expected for the following day and the rest of our time in the park.  We started with the the Queen's Garden trail, which lead down into the canyon amphitheater among the hoodoos. It was really cool to see the rock formations up close, and it was surprising how big they are once you stand next to them. 

View from the top of Queen's Garden Trail -- you can see the trail and tiny people down below




Hoodoo formations along the trail


Striations of color


Matt giving some scale to the hoodoos -- they are huge!

Next, we drove the main park road down to its end and stopped at all of the lookouts.  These gave us nice views of the Bryce Amphitheater and other rock formations in the park.  We came back to amphitheater close to sunset for some photos.

View from Rainbow Point, named for the rainbow of colors you can see here

Natural grottos at Bryce Point

Bryce Point

Sunset light from the aptly named Sunset Point

The following morning was cloudy, but I woke up at 6am to try to get some sunrise photos. Unfortunately there wasn’t much sun as the thunderstorms were already rolling in.  There were lots of other photographers up with me waiting for the sun to break through the clouds, but it wasn't looking promising.  We did get a glimpse of sun for a few seconds and I was able to take a couple of shots, but shortly after that the sun disappeared behind a big cloud and that was pretty much the end of it.  It started raining shortly after that.

Sunrise

We did one more quick hike along Mossy Cave trail, but it was thundering elsewhere in the park so we retreated to the car quickly.  Rather than spend the next few rainy days in our tent, we decided to leave the park slightly ahead of schedule and head for drier weather to the north.

Lots more photos from Bryce here.