Bryce Canyon & Grand Canyon
Trip Start
Jul 02, 2011
1
25
36
Trip End
Sep 26, 2011
Kanab, Utah
Thursday, August 25, 2011
So we left Salt Lake City not too early as we would still be in Utah for the next few nights. We still had a few hours drive ahead of us though. Our only stop for the day was Bryce Canyon National Park. I didn't really know what Bryce Canyon looked like until we began driving through it, but considering the weather and the blue skies we had, Bryce Canyon was just divine!!!
When we entered the park I began noticing how orange all of the rock was. My first thought was that I felt like we were driving through a Mario Kart video game or Cars video game. We had rock on both sides of us that was bright orange and it felt like we were driving through the middle of a desert, with an amazing blue sky above. It was really cool!
We eventually got out of the bus and were able to look around. Bryce Canyon is not a busy park. It gets less visitors than Grand Canyon and Zion National Parks since it is more remote than the rest. However, I like Bryce Canyon better than both these parks, because the views that you get just blow you away more. It was just so beautiful, I can’t even explain it really without pictures. I am going to be talking about the other parks here, as we visited all 3 in 3 days so you can decide for yourself which one you like the best. I just think that as beautiful as some of these parks are, Bryce Canyon was the most striking of them all.
Bryce Canyon is not a Canyon even though it has the name. It is a distinctive National Park as all of the rocks in it have been formed by erosion, and these rocks are known as Hoodoos. They were just beautiful to look at and really just made the hike we all did around the park so scenic.
It took about an hour or so to walk all the way from the top, down to the bottom and back up again. It was a great walk though and we took our time walking through. It was different to other hikes I have done and would do at the other parks, as you walked through archways and little tunnels so it was very cool to explore in this way. It didn’t take too long to get down to the bottom, and being down the bottom was awesome as the hoodoos were huge at this stage. There was also one area where we had just huge rocks all around and you could just see out of them in the distance where the sun was shining in. It was really nice!
We then had to walk back up to the top we had come down from which was the killer after walking for awhile, but eventually we made it up and could sit and relax. We had plenty of time to relax as we had another hour to just sit so we were able to recover even though it was a very hot day.
That night we had dinner at the Hollywood Movie Sets across the road (it was the only place near the hotel as we were truly in the middle of nowhere). The movie sets are actual sets that have been used in Westerns and other films. The Utah mountains are right behind them so they have literally filmed scenes from films like Outlaw Josey Wales to Point Break. I took photos of the sets so you can see what they look like, but they have filmed hundreds of productions here so it is pretty cool to see. They rang the triangle to say dinner was served it was so corny, but cool. We had steak, potato and salad. The barbeque sauce was just delicious so the dinner was very nice! After dinner we all just sat outside the hotel rooms as they were outside and some of the people were playing drinking games with beer as that’s all there was being in Utah.
The next morning we were heading to the Grand Canyon. The last time I was in the US, I saw the South Rim of the Grand Canyon which was just beautiful. This time, and because we were in Utah and not near the spot where the South Rim is closer to Nevada and Vegas, we saw the North Rim on this visit. I hadn’t seen the North Rim so I was excited to see what the other side would look like. We didn’t have a huge drive which was good since we would have a heap of time to explore. Once we arrived, we had to walk 30 minutes just to get to the start of the hike which was fabulous and tired us out even before we started. It was a hot day but there were a few clouds around too. It was humid though so I was glad I had my water with me on this hike.
Once we entered the hike trail, we walked a good hour until we hit a lookout which was nice to see. We had to walk down hill to get to this lookout so we were kind of in the canyon but still high enough not to be that far in it. Since it had taken an hour just to get here I wasn’t going any further as the walk back up to the start would be a killer! Some of the others continued on, but the rest of us walked back up to the top. It took us awhile as we had to keep stopping to rest, but eventually we made it back up and then had to endure the 30 minute walk back to the rest area where the hotel and shops were.
It was only 11am at this rate so by now we were very hungry. The restaurant opened in 30 minutes so since the restaurant and hotel were on a scenic spot I walked around onto this and out into a lookout that took you more into the Canyon than the restaurant did so the views from this lookout were spectacular and were even better than the views from the hike so it kind of made you wonder why we walked so far when it was all right here. But I suppose it was nice to get some exercise in and the scenery was nice none the less on the hike.
Once the restaurant opened we all pretty much had lunch here. They had a buffet which was good value. It was just pasta either with a meat sauce, marinara sauce or alfredo sauce, all you could eat. They also had salad so it was a pretty nice meal and since we were all starving this really filled us up.
After lunch we got back on the bus and majority of us had the afternoon off to do whatever we wanted. It was nice to be able to relax just for a minute so a few hours was like gold. That night, we didn’t have a dinner included so we had a barbeque in a park near where we were staying. It was a beautiful picnic area, so pretty and with the mountains all around us it was just nice to sit and relax with everyone on our last night in Utah before heading off tomorrow morning for Las Vegas!!!
I was also looking forward to Vegas more so than anyone as the wheel on my large suitcase was snapped off here which was very annoying, so I needed a new suitcase as I had a month of travel left. So I was hoping to find one relatively cheap in Vegas. So I was officially 2/3 out of replacing my bags after the laptop bag broke in Alaska...luggage was clearly not my friend on this trip.
That’s all for now, enjoy the pictures.
Love Toni xo
