Today we made our way out of Zion Canyon and towards Bryce Canyon. Along the way, we stopped at a way overpriced, but really delicious and totally worth it German bakery (in the middle of nowhere Utah?!)
The primary difference between the parks is that in Zion you are at the bottom of the canyon and Bryce you stand atop the Canyon and look down at the
“hoodoos” – the term for the rock spires that weather and time left behind in the park. As you can tell, they are quite the sight.
We drove to some of the viewpoints and then decided to give our legs a rest and do the “easy” Navajo and Queen’s Garden trail. Walking amongst the hoodoos was a really special sight. We then rode the shuttle bus aimlessly trying to decide which viewpoint would be best to watch sunset from and managed to miss the orange glow that the hoodoos take on just before sunset. Oh well, we enjoyed talking to the bus driver about his life story along the way.
[gfycat data_id="UltimateGrandioseJenny" data_autoplay=true data_controls=false]We made our way over to the visitor center for a talk called “violence from the void” – all the ways in which cosmic happenings will/could obliterate the earth. It was very uplifting…nah, it was actually pretty cool and made me want to watch the Cosmos all over again.
Bryce is a very well-known dark sky conservancy and we enjoyed the ranger-led program afterwards that included getting to look through super powerful telescopes at various galaxies, nebula, star clusters, etc. We then drove to a viewpoint in the park for an even darker sky and JD snagged an awesome photo of the Milky Way over top of the hoodoos in the park. We met some German college students taking a trip through the national parks and enjoyed chatting with them before returning to our hotel very late last night. Tomorrow we will seek out another not so rough on the legs hike and start making our way up to Salt Lake City to make for an easier departure on Monday.
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