Bryce Canyon

On our first morning at the cabin, we all headed to Bryce Canyon about 45 minutes away. It was a pleasant temperature at the visitor center and more forest-y than I was expecting. I guess that's what you get at 8000 feet of elevation.

After a quick spin around the vc and an early PBJ lunch, we hopped on the shuttle to see more of the park. Our stop was at Sunset Point, and the views were spectacular!

We decided to do a short 1.3 mile hike (Navajo Loop Trail) down into the hoodoos, and we could tell from the overlook that most of the 550-ft descent would be in the first part of the trail.  This picture is looking back up at the numerous switchbacks we just came down, and we all know that what goes down must go back up at the end.  Yikes!

The trail made use of some tunnels to cut through the huge walls of hoodoos, which the kids enjoyed. (We even got to drive thru a couple of rock tunnels on the road to Bryce.)

The last switchbacks led to Wall Street, Bryce Canyon's only slot canyon. It was an impressively narrow stretch between rock walls that provided some much appreciated shade.

Can you tell that I had a serious grip on Hadley's arm the whole way down? Ha! No Yellowstone repeats were going to happen here, if I could help it!

How does a tree this large take root in an inch of dust and solid rock?  Pretty amazing!

Once we were at the bottom of the canyon, it was much hotter.  But there was still an impressive amount of wildlife and trees thriving in this dusty, dry place. Such a pretty contrast between the evergreen trees and bright orange rocks!

The way back up was many more switchbacks with a gradual incline thrown in between for some different views. Climbing up 550 feet at the high elevation was a challenge! Kudos to John who did it with 30-lb+ kid on his shoulders!  And Owen was a champ all the way by himself, though he did say he was done with hiking for the day.  :)

 The hoodoo on the very left below is called Thor's hammer (not hard to see why).

We met up with Oma at the lodge, and John and I did a quick walk to Sunrise Point for a different vantage point. I was hyper-aware of the ledge while trying to take our selfie!

Then we decided to head back to the cars for more food and to drive to the end of the park road. Our first stop was at Natural Bridge, which was well worth a peak. It's hard to tell here, but it spans over 85-feet!

This is what it looks like when you are sub-3-feet tall. Let's just say that someone has a lot of faith in guard rails!

The end of the road was Rainbow Point, which curves back around to look at the whole formation from the south. A truly amazing landscape that is difficult to capture on film!

We were all dusty, tired, and ready to head back to the cabin by that point, so that's what we did! All in all, Bryce is worth a stop if you are in the area, and really not very crowded for a national park.