Day Nine: Bryce Canyon, part II

A second day at Bryce Canyon was just as nice as the first day. This day had something that really none of our other days at the parks have had...clouds! What a surprise, and something we had actually hoped for most days...to add some interest to the extremely blue skies! It started out cooler, as we left the hotel for the park (just a few minutes away), it was 43 degrees so Terri opted to wear her jeans for the morning as we were going on a three mile hike and figured that it would be cooler, especially since we were going down into the canyon. Well, it wasn't long before she figured out that shorts would have been a better option...oh well, she survived!

Our hike, called Queens Garden/Navajo Loop Combination and it was about 3 miles and titled the best three mile hike you will ever take...and we have to agree, it was spectacular. The first part was easy, just downhill and as we got closer to the bottom, we were impressed with the hoodoos as we were now looking UP at them, rather than down...and walking among them...truly amazing! The second part of the hike was almost like we were hiking in the woods of the northwest...although past the trees you could see the cliffs of the canyon and the beautiful red and white rock...and hoodoos. Of course, as with anything that goes down...there's always an "up" part, so that was the last part of the hike, but was really nicely done in a section called "Wall Street" where the trail was a series of switchbacks that were made up with rock walls...and the view from both the bottom and top was great! Finally, we made it back to the top...and then had a half mile hike back to the car.

After that, we checked out the remaining overlooks and viewing points in the park...was a beautiful park and such an amazing sight when just a few miles away, you would have no idea that this is there, it's just countryside as you drive along the highways that surround it...wow, our country has SO many beautiful places to visit...I'm sure that we can keep busy seeing all these amazing sights for our lifetime!

It's Friday morning and we are on the road again, headed to Zion National Park, but today will do some sightseeing along the way...hopefully, some fall colors and maybe even a ghost town...we will see what we find. It's even cloudier this morning than yesterday...hope we get at least a bit of blue to go with the fall colors! Saturday and Sunday will be devoted to Zion and then we'll pack up early Monday, head back to Salt Lake City to fly home...then it'll be back to reality! We hope you enjoy these photos...it really is incredible to think that 1000's of years ago all of this began...and here we are in this day, seeing such an amazing sight!

We found some old cars and used them to "play" at sunset, just in front of our hotel

PS...lost our signal on the road, imagine that...so this post will be later than planned since I can't do anything else on it until we get closer to society! In the meantime, we are thoroughly enjoying driving on Scenic Hwy 14 in Utah...amazing fall colors...so for now...we'll just enjoy this and not worry about this post.