Bryce Canyon

This was the trip that was destined not to be. At the start of the year, I planned a trip for us to take during spring break. We'd hit two national parks, and really scratch that camping itch that had been building up all winter. The first problem we ran into was that someone grabbed up most of the days for that week out from under my wife. She was only able to get vacation for the Monday and Tuesday of spring break. She was able to get the Saturday and Sunday leading into those, however, so it looked like we'd have four days, so it would probably work okay.

But again, it was the trip that was destined not to be, so it wouldn't be that easy. As we got closer to spring break, my wife told me that there was a meeting that she couldn't miss scheduled for Tuesday. So, now she didn't really have the day off after all. On top of that, my son announced that he had a birthday party...a big, all-day extravaganza of a birthday party...that he really wanted to attend scheduled for Saturday. Our four available days had now become two. It looked like the trip was probably going to have to be canceled.

We considered making my son take one for the team and skip his birthday party. Then, at least we'd have three days, we could at least hit one national park with that much time. He was not pleased with the idea, however. He really wanted to go. All his best friends were going to be there, and if he had to skip it, then, well...he would be sad.

My wife swooped in with an alternate plan. She managed to get her boss at work to take care of the meeting for her, and now Tuesday was back on the table. My son was able to go to his birthday party, and we could leave for three days starting Sunday morning.

But again, it was the trip that was destined not to be, so it still couldn't be that easy. The Saturday right before we were supposed to leave, my wife came down with something. She sent me to the grocery store to pick up the stuff we needed for the trip. She was telling me over the phone the list of what I needed to buy, when suddenly she stopped talking. She ran to the bathroom and started hurling instead. I patiently waited there in the store for her to finish so she could finish giving me her list. Eventually, I had to just ask her to text the list, and let her go be sick.

I went through the motions of buying all the stuff on the list, even though I figured there was no way we'd be camping the next day. We weren't heading out to the middle of nowhere to sleep in a tent with one of us puking their guts out the whole time. It was a ridiculous idea. My wife insisted that we wait and see how she felt in the morning...in between bouts of vomit. I was sure that we at least wouldn't be leaving until Monday at the earliest, and I told her as much. She seemed to agree...that night anyway.

But when morning came, she decided she was good to go. We were worried we'd get there only to discover that there were no campsites left, but we packed everything up and went anyway. There were plenty of places we could stay outside of the park if all the campsites were taken. We'd be okay one way or another.

So, we got in the car and headed down. Bryce Canyon was our destination. We drove through seemingly endless sagebrush covered hills for about four hours. But then things started to change. We hit a spot in our journey called Red Canyon, and the scenery changed to this:

Then, we passed through this:

Like a gateway into a magic kingdom, we transitioned from one land to another. We'd left the Great Basin and ascended onto the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau is home to so many of the most amazing features of the United States of America, Bryce Canyon National Park being one of them.

It turns out there were plenty of camping spots available (this probably should have been a foreboding sign to us, but we paid it no mind). We set up our tent, and hustled out to our first sight of the actual canyon.

There are several view points to take in the grandeur of Bryce Canyon scattered along the rim. Each of them have different names, and two of them are named for the time that it is best to come and view: Sunset Point and Sunrise Point. We had a few minutes before sunset, so we jammed out to Sunset Point. And this is what we were greeted with:

I thought this was a pretty funny story, so I'm going to tell it. We came up to the canyon, and looked at it for a minute, then we moved on until we made it to Sunset Point proper. For a moment, the fence and guard rails were blocking our sight line, and the canyon went away. When the canyon hove back into view, my son became emotionally overwhelmed. "Oh my gosh, that is so cool!" I could hear his voice break a little as he said it.

"Yeah, it's really nice, isn't it?" I said.

"Yeah," he replied. "Up until now I wasn't that impressed, but this is amazing."

I was confused. "You weren't that impressed? So that stuff we just looked at over on the side there wasn't any good?"

"No, no," he said. "I mean the entrance and the campground and all that kind of stuff. At Zion and at Glacier, you see the good stuff right away. There's canyons and mountains that you can't miss from the minute you come in. Bryce takes a while before you see the good stuff."

"Ah," I said. "I understand now. I guess you're right."

Since we made camping in general and visiting national parks in particular a focus of our leisure activities, the whole family has really gotten on board, although I think it's safe to say that my son is the one who appreciates it the most. He really loves camping, and seeing the beauty of nature. It doesn't really surprise me that he could become emotionally moved by the sight of a beautiful view.

My wife also loves nature, but she has a real problem with cliffs. She says she's not afraid of heights, she just afraid of edges...or afraid of falls. And not just for herself either. She's probably more afraid seeing me or the kids standing near a cliff's edge than she is being next to one herself. For example, seeing me looking over the rim of the canyon here like this was almost too much for her to handle.

We all find it a little amusing to see her getting so worked up about it, and some of the kids will continue to bug her about it until she just can't take it any more. That's what happened here. She got tired of us ribbing her about it, and took Little's hand and walked away down the Rim Trail.

We followed my wife along the Rim Trail. We were heading from Sunset Point over to Sunrise Point. The two are pretty close together. I took a lot of pictures of the canyon at sunset. I think we might have arrived just too late to get the best of the sunset's effects. You can see the light playing across some of the cliffs in the far background of this picture while the foreground is darker.

They say the color of the rock becomes more interesting at sunset, so maybe that darker orange of the foreground is what they're talking about. Then there's this picture of a line of hoodoos that is half in light and half in shadow:

Maybe that's more interesting. I don't know, but I think that they're actually talking about stuff like this picture:

Those are pretty colors, and I suppose you'd only get them at sunset.

We continued our walk along the Rim Trail, taking some great pictures. Someone even actually took a picture of me! That doesn't happen a lot. I'm always the guy behind the camera not the one in the pictures.

I guess when everybody has a phone...and therefore a camera in their pocket, it's bound to happen a little more often.

The last picture I'll share with you from this night is this big sunset panorama that I took. Bryce is the kind of place that just begs for a panorama; the canyon just keeps going on and on forever, and defies traditional aspect ratios.

It was getting dark now, though, and it was time to head back to the car and then back to the campground. My wife was talking about returning in the morning to witness the sunrise on Sunrise Point, and everyone seemed to be agreeing, as if they'd actually be up for getting out of bed that early in the morning. It seemed like that was the plan...at least it was until night fell, and we found out just how cold and uncomfortable sleeping in a tent at 8,000 feet in the spring could actually be.

It wasn't winter any longer, and the daytime hours were the perfect temperature, but the night time was a completely different story. Only one of our sleeping bags is rated for cold weather. We knew it was probably going to be an uncomfortable night, and brought a lot of extra blankets to try to mitigate the problem, but they just didn't do the trick. So, we all spent a lot of the night waking up and rolling around, trying to adjust our blankets and sleeping bags to a configuration that would provide a little more warmth. In other words, none of us got much sleep.

When sunrise came, we all just kept on sleeping. Nobody cared enough about witnessing Sunrise Point at sunrise to get out of bed. In fact, we didn't get up and going with breakfast until almost 10:00 AM, which is kind of unheard of for a camping trip. Usually the sun becomes too insistent much earlier than that, and you can't help but wake up, but not so here.

Eventually, we got up and got going though. Today, it was time to hike down into all those cliffs and hoodoos. I really wanted to do that the night before, and it was a bit of an exercise in self control to stand and look at everything from a distance and not go in closer. It had been too late at night then, and I would have been caught in a bad place in the dark. But now was the perfect time. So, we went back out to where we were the night before, and took the trail that led down.

We were all taking tons of pictures as we hiked. This one is Thor's Hammer, which is one of the most recognizable features from the canyon, and used on all of their apparel and other souvenirs.

We headed down among all those towering rocks, and the weird thing is finding all the tall pine trees there.

The water seeping through the ground turns out to be enough to feed these big trees. They aren't that thick, but they're everywhere.

The hike through the canyon by way of the Navajo Loop trail was a long way from what you would call a piece of cake. It was a very steep decent to begin with, which wore your legs out from one side. Then it was a steep ascent on the other end, which wore out what little strength you had left in your legs.

In between, though, there was a lot of easy flat trail with lots of beautiful scenery. I suppose if you're there often enough, things will start to look familiar, but to me, one set of hoodoos looked an awful lot like the next. Don't get me wrong, they were all beautiful and different. Just not something that I could discriminate one from the next, unless they were really distinctive like Thor's Hammer or something.

This spot here was right before we made it out of the canyon and back up to Sunrise Point, finishing the loop.

I really like the look of it. I felt like if it weren't for the few trees and bushes, I might as well be on Mars. The colors were really interesting, and it seemed like the least hospitable place on earth. I really thought I might see some cowboy...maybe John Wayne, but probably not, because I don't think the Duke ever let himself get into such an unfavorable situation...trudging along on an emaciated horse, pleading for water.

We huffed and puffed and finally ascended our way up out of the canyon again. Now it was time to get to a few of the other attractions at the park. There is more than just Sunset and Sunrise Point to view the canyon from, for example. So, the next place we headed to was called Bryce Point. I didn't think I could still be impressed, but seeing the canyon from this angle was even more amazing.

First of all, there was this formation that looks strikingly like a castle:

 Like I said, this spot was the most amazing of all. Just look at this view!

 Here's a panorama I took from Bryce Point. The view just went on and on forever.

After all the time I'd already spent in the canyon and looking at the canyon, I was sure there was nothing more that could take my breath away, but I can only describe this spot as...breathtaking.

This isn't Arches National Park, but there are plenty of things that could qualify as arches among the hoodoos in the canyon. Then there's this:

It's hard to tell from the picture, but this thing is a really big arch. It's called Natural Bridge, and it's probably four or five stories tall. When we got to the viewpoint for it, I was surprised by its size. I'd seen pictures of it, and it didn't seem so big. That's one of those things about going to visit national parks. Every one of them has been photographed to death. You can see everything there is online, and all of the pictures will probably be better than whatever you can take yourself as well. However, you can never understand the grandeur of these places without experiencing them first hand.

After Natural Bridge, we only had time to go to the visitor center and get some souvenirs before we went back to camp for dinner. We made s'mores, and everybody who wasn't a diabetic in the family really enjoyed them.

Soon, it was time to go back to bed. We knew another cold night was in store, and this time, we were a little better prepared. The main thing we learned was that we needed to put the extra blankets on the inside of the sleeping bags instead of on top of them. We also rearranged the sleeping arrangements. We knew that Little wouldn't remain in his sleeping bag, and would insist on being with my wife in her bed, so we started with that, and the sleeping bag that he would have occupied didn't go unused. Instead I switched to that bag. With these changes, we managed to get through the night in a much better way.

When the morning came, everyone was much happier. We broke down camp, and loaded up the van for the trip home. There was one more place my wife wanted to see before we left called Mossy Cave. It was a short hike up a hill to the cave. The cave had some ice in it that still hadn't melted yet.

 I really liked this ice pillar especially.

Then we got into the car. I had one more last place I wanted to visit on our way out. It was the place we first saw on the way in called Red Canyon. Unfortunately, everyone else seemed not to be on the same page as me. The minute I pulled the car into the parking lot at Red Canyon, the whining started up. I didn't care. I ignored it. I'd driven four hours from home to come and see this place, and I was bound and determined to see every last place I wanted to before driving four hours back home.

"Is there at least a short trail?" they asked. I guess we hadn't slept as well as I'd thought, because that's all anyone wanted to do.

I looked at the trail map they had posted outside the visitor center, found that there was indeed some short trails, and forced everyone out of the car for one last hike. The scenery was really pretty. It was different that Bryce Canyon for the most part. Less jagged, and a darker red in general as well.

 In the tiny little walk we took, we saw several really cool rock formations.

But nobody was having any fun anymore. It was time to leave. We got in the car and headed for home. We were all tired, and most of us (me not included) got to sleep on the way to make things better.