National Park number 2 on our month long trip to see the 5 parks in Utah. This is just amazing. We both do not understand how we did not come here when we lived in California and had an RV. We waited way too long!
So we left Zion and took the alternate route so as not to go through the tunnel and busy road through the park. It added about 60 miles but it was a very scenic drive. We left weather where it was in the 80’s during the day and 40’s at night to where it is in the low 50’s during the day and in the teens at nights. So far the coldest night has been 16 degrees. For those of you not into RV’s that means filling the onboard water tanks and disconnecting your water hose and sewer hose. I forgot to disconnect the sewer hose the first night and had some issues the next day, but fortunately it warmed up enough to resolve the issues.
The big difference is instead of being at the bottom of the canyon, like we were in Zion, we are now at the top, at almost 8,000 feet. So you see some snow still on the ground and when the wind blows it is really cold. Not as busy here as it was in Zion but still a good crowd. Many foreign speaking tourists both at Zion and here. From my great language skills I would say France, Germany and eastern Europe.
OK, back to the park. This park features Hoodoos. These are rock formations caused by erosion of the sandstone. We first encountered these when we visited Banff in Alberta, Canada. Here it is the whole canyon. Words do not do it justice so I will just post some pictures.
Our first full day here we drove the entire park and stopped at each of the viewpoints. We really could not do much else as the wind was blowing and made it feel like it was in the 20’s outside. Reminded both of us of living in Chicago!!
On Friday we drove back on the road we came in to take some pictures of the tunnels they have made in the rock.
We then drove north on the highway 12 scenic byway, which we will be taking to our next stop. We drove to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is a huge park, but mainly is not accessible unless you have a good off road vehicle and want to hike. We attempted to visit one landmark but they have not graded the roads since winter and I thought we would lose the shocks on the truck, so we turned around.
Today, Easter Sunday, we took a 2 1/2 hour hike down into the canyon at Bryce. It is called “Walk amongst the Hoodoos” Easy going down, hard coming up, but it was neat to see the Hoodoos up close and to be at the bottom of the canyon.
We are here for another couple of days then we move to Torrey, Utah which is near Capitol Reef National Park.
Route: From Zion we took Highway 9 west to Highway 59 and 389 east and north to Highway 89 north to Highway 12 into Bryce.
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