Journal
When our Tucson friends Lisa and Dan said they were planning a camping trip to Bryce Canyon in October, we invited ourselves along. I’d been to Bryce for two brief hours exactly 14 years ago when my siblings took our dad to Zion National Park to commemorate his seventieth birthday. This time, we had six days to explore this stunning national park. Dan and Lisa were the first to arrive and reserved us a great spot in the North Campground where we could walk to the Rim Trail and most of the prime spots in the park.
This is #19, our sweet and level camping spot in the “A Loop”, for five nights, “down the street” from friends Lisa and Dan. We easily filled the week without moving the van once, and would love to come back for another week!
October 12: Tower Bridge hike.
October 13: A day trip to Escalante and Kodachrome Basin State Park. Escalante is a quaint little town that has almost a hundred homes, “back houses” and barns still intact from the original 1876 Mormon settlement. The photos below are from Kodachrome Basin (a National Geographic Society expedition named the area Kodachrome after Kodak’s color film in 1948). It’s really more of a box canyon, and on the day we visited, a lack of breeze meant we didn’t stay longer than needed to admire these impressive outcroppings.
October 14: Bryce’s Queen’s Garden to Navajo Loop via Wall Street hike. This was our favorite hike because the return leg up to the Rim trail is through a narrow canyon filled with shade and cold breezes— the perfect way to end a hike on a hot day.
October 15: Biking Bryce ten miles along the new Shared Use Path from Inspiration Point to Fairyland Point. Then wrestling with the pay showers and laundry at the Bryce General Store.
Inspiration Point panorama:
Fairyland Point panorama:
October 16: After packing up Friday morning, our last outing was to drive 18 miles to the end of the park and back, stopping at the overlooks we missed. Here are just a few:
And a final sunrise panorama at Bryce. Did you know people all along the rim actually cheer when the sun comes up over the horizon? Pretty cool.
