Monday June 16, 2014

Non-Travel Day

 

We spent the entire day at “Bryce Canyon National Park” . Our first stop was the Visitor’s Center where we viewed a 20 minute film about the park, and talked to a park ranger. Bryce Canyon’s dramatic features are the tremendous number of pink and orange hoodoos, towering cliffs and the rock pinnacles.  Hoodoos are rock formations that have been created over countless years by the erosion of material from the narrow walls of rock; to the point where a pillar or spire of rock is all that remains. During this erosion process the rocks take on many shapes and it is this unpredictable process that makes the structures in Bryce Canyon so fascinating. We then headed out on our exploration of the park and our first overlook at Sunrise Point, here the view of the canyon was fantastic, and it was here that we started off on our first hike of the day. We headed down off the rim of the canyon into a wonderland of rock formations, on the Queens Garden Trail; this was a .9 mile hike down the cliff face over numerous switchbacks and down some steep grades. The trek down was strenuous, and all the time I kept thinking that for every step down we had to climb back up the same number of steps . It was wonderful being able to walk around and through these spectacular rock
formations, being up close and personal with the rock gave us a better understanding of what it took to create these formations. The name of the trail was appropriate as it truly was a rock garden for a queen. After arriving at the bottom it was only a short walk until we had to
start climbing back up to the canyon rim. The path we chose was the shorter of two, at 1.6 miles. The trail continues through the canyon for a while and then started back up. The
climb up was strenuous, requiring frequent stops to catch our breath and take a drink of water, like the hike down this trail had many switchbacks and steep inclines. The elevation change was 357 feet, so it was like climbing a flight of stairs up to the roof of a 35 story building. After 2 and a half hours we got back to the truck. It was a long and arduous hike but it was worth all of the effort. We then drove 15 miles to the “Rainbow Point Overlook”, stopping along the way at several other overlooks and taking some short hikes. Returning to the central part of the park we drove to “Paria View”, “Inspiration Point” and “Bryce Point”. Each of these overlooks required short hikes from the parking lots in order to get a view of the canyon, but each of the
hikes was worth the effort, as the scenery was breathtaking. We both felt exhausted after this strenuous day.