Utah Day 3 – Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef

We all enjoyed a breakfast in the yurt, croissant, egg and bacon. Once again, we packed up and left for Bryce Canyon National Park. As we climbed in elevation, the sky started to turn gray. We also start to see different rock formations, most distinctly hoodoos.

As we got closer to the park, Jie was stopped by a police for speeding. Luckily, the policeman was very nice and only issued a warning. Our last road trip to Canada, I got a hefty fine for speeding in New York state. Utah people seemed much nicer, lol.

Bryce Canyon National Park

As we expected, there was a lot of snow in Bryce Canyon, after all it’s nearly 4000 feet higher in elevation than Zion. Our initial plan was to drive the scenic road and only stop at lookouts. The first parking lot we pulled into was Sunset Point. It was already quite crowded, but we did manage to find a parking space.

I was mesmerized by the sheer amount of the hoodoos in front of me. The color, the shape, everything about them were amazing. It looked as though the Navajo Loop trail was in pretty good shape, we decided to hike down.

The switchbacks wound its way down between narrow walls of colorful limestone with views of towering Douglas fur. The snow on the trail looked like powdered sugar dusting a multi-tiered cake.

As we meandered our way down the canyon, we got up close to the hoodoos. Here is the most iconic Thor’s Hammer.

Wall Street which was on the right side of the Navajo Loop was still closed, however the Twin Bridge on the left side was open.

Instead of looping back to Sunset Point, we continued onto the Queen’s Garden Trail which led us the Queen Victoria hoodoo. The resemblance was startling.

We then connected to Peekaboo Loop Trail and ascended to Sunrise Point. From there, we took the rim trail and got back to the car.

As we continued on the scenic drive, it started snowing. The visibility at Bryce Point was getting pretty bad. We decided to leave Bryce Canyon and head toward our next stop: Capitol Reef National Park.

Capitol Reef National Park

The scenic drive is a 8 mile paved road, a very easy drive with varying sceneries. The first stop was Moenkopi Formation, followed by rugged rock walls of different color, thickness and texture.

There are two dirt spurt roads, Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge. We saved Grand Wash for tomorrow and drove down Capitol Gorge for a short hike for those Swiss cheese rocks, pioneer registrations and pre-historic petroglyphs.

The day ended with a take-out dinner from Curry Pizza, an Indian restaurant once featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners Drive-in and Dives. The naan and pizza crusts were very dry and hard, but pizza topping, curry and mango lassi were tasty.