NNs On the Wind

It’s not that far from Capitol Reef NP to Bryce Canyon NP and it was nice to be booked in for 3 nights at Sunset Campground inside the park.  Our drive to Bryce was along Route 12, through portions of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The scenery was amazing. It took me some research to learn what “staircase” meant. Turns out it reflects the mesa/plateaus the step down from the area around Bryce to the Grand Canyon, approximately 100 miles away.

Bryce is the smallest of the National Parks. There is a great shuttle system that goes to many of the overlooks of the park as well as into the adjacent town. The shuttle that travelled the round trip to Rainbow Point wasn’t operating due to Covid so we missed that trip. Our timing on arrival and departure was not good for taking the detour of 40 miles to see Rainbow Point in the RV.

Another element of Bryce that slowed us somewhat was this park is at the highest altitude of the parks we’ve been to, more than 8000 ft. It’s the first time I clearly felt the impact of walking up hill and having to slow down to catch my breath.

This is a park on a rim looking down at what is known as Hoodoos; eroded columns of sandstone. Another place we’ve been with similar land forms was in Gorem, Turkey (Cappadocia). There are a number of trails down into the canyons but we worried the climb back out would be difficult. We shuttled to various overlooks and walked the rim to a few others. The views down were clear and colorful. However the views out to the distant east were clearly obscured by haze/fire smoke. It’s hard to imagine the majesty of the views with the smoke. There were also some rain storms visible in the distance though none made it as far as where we were.

We spent a little time at the Visitor’s Center on our first full day at Bryce. The wifi is very weak. It turned out that there were areas where my TMobile cell/data service was strong enough to set up the hotspot so both of us could get caught up on our laptops. On the last day I was very lucky to get good signal and reserve our Zion shuttle for the next day. Due to Covid the Zion Shuttle system was by reservation only. The Springdale shuttle from the town to/from the west entrance was open to anyone without reservation.