Bryce Canyon National Park

Less than 100 miles from Zion, our next stop was Bryce Canyon National Park. It's more of a long ridge that is eroding spectacularly than a true canyon. We spent an afternoon driving along the ridge, stopping to do several short hikes to viewpoints, before camping there that night.

Just as Zion is the beginnings of a Grand Canyon, Bryce is the beginnings of another Zion. Here, the gulleys and carvings that water and ice have left are in their smallest state, just forming. Erosion and weathering have created this panoramic maze of hoodoos - small, odd-shaped rock formations - that stretches out for miles with the same diverse color palette as Zion, still slowly eroding away today.

The weather was cold and breezy while we were there on Sunday afternoon, and the clouds and surrounding rain showers made for some great pictures of Utah's high plateaus and the hoodoos.

The hoodoo structures and eroded rock are fascinating: I could (and did) spend hours taking in the patterns and shapes.

The cold day meant that the night would be even worse: we decided to settle for an uncomfortable night sleeping in the car rather than in the tent and severe cold. Sure enough, we woke up on Monday morning to frost on the van windows and a temperature of 32 F. 

On that morning, we hiked down under the rim for several miles through the hoodoos. It was neat to hike around and (literally) through them, yet the hike was tough due to the multiple ups and downs in the canyon. They are very large, most 30 or 60 feet tall. They are also surprisingly fragile - the sandstone will rub off and fall away as sand with just the touch of your fingers.

The scale of some small hoodoos...

...and some much larger ones.

Often the trails cut straight through the rock.

Our visit was great, but cold. Fortunately, we had a planned hotel stop on Monday night to rest warm and well. This hotel stop in Richfield, UT was the midpoint of our drive east across the state - on Tuesday, we arrived in Moab to start our journey through two of Utah's eastern national parks: Arches and Canyonlands.