Bryce Canyon

Today was a long day. We got up and realized that we’d better make reservations for places to stay for our next stops, so I phoned ahead to several hotels before finally getting a reservation in Torrey. Almost all the rooms were gone – and the hotels told me that there was an unusual number of European tourists this time of year. Probably due to the low USD compared to the Euro.

We had a nice breakfast (with a group of French people who were loudly complaining in French about pretty much everything about their lives during their meal), looked at a couple of crappy “Native Craft” shops (Native yes, crafts… well, it depends on what you consider to be a craft). Then we got back in the car and drove to Bryce Canyon.

Bryce Canyon National Park is famous for its strange rock formations called Hoodoos. Carved out of bright red/orange sandstone, they stand as clusters of tall pinnacles with very narrow canyons between them.

We parked at Ruby’s and took the shuttle through the park. We were very fortunate to see a couple of Pronghorn standing just off the main road. We got off at Bryce Point then walked along the canyon trail to Inspiration Point. We had a couple of breaks so the Pregnant One could have some snacks and catch her breath – it’s at 8000’ elevation so the walk was more effort than we realized.

From Inspiration Point we took the shuttle to Sunset Point and walked down into Bryce Canyon along the Navajo Loop trail. This took us down to the canyon floor through a winding trail between some of the Hoodoos. Wow, a very steep hike but well worth the effort. The bright red sandstone framed against a deep blue sky made some spectacular pictures. We took our time and finally huffed and puffed our way back to the canyon lip.

We had dinner in the Bryce Lodge. Looking at the Lodge dining room décor and menu we were really looking forward to a gourmet meal. Unfortunately this was not to be. The dinner was disappointing to put it mildly – the service was mediocre and the food was poor. The “seasonal vegetables” turned out to be steamed baby carrots just dumped on the plate – dry and uninviting, they looked like they’d just been poured out of the bag, steamed and then thrown on the dish as an afterthought. No butter, no sauce, just these dry carrots with a whitish bark on them. Oh well.

We missed the last shuttle bus out of Bryce Canyon by mere minutes… so we had to rely on someone from the lodge to give us a lift back to Ruby’s. An hour or so later we were back on the road to Torrey. By this time it was dark and we were on an unlit section of highway just outside of Bryce. Celine suddenly made a little yelp and pointed – at a large dark brown blotch just at the range of our headlights. I slammed on the brakes and we saw a positively enormous bull Elk leap out of the way at the last second before running up the bank and posing in the moonlight. I could see the huge rack of antlers and the headlights shining off his eyes. Hearts pounding we drove on, realizing that if we’d hit the elk this story would have had a much more tragic ending.