Thanksgiving 2007: Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks

After our eventful day in Zion National Park we drove the short distance to Bryce Canyon National Park. Arriving after dark, we didn't get to enjoy the scenery until the next morning. We got up early and were in the park just around sunrise, which we enjoyed from Sunset Point. Sunrise at Bryce is amazing, and I would recommend to any one who visits to get out of bed early to experience it.

Bryce Canyon (which isn't a canyon, but there is no geologic name to describe exactly what it is), is an exposed feature of the red Utah landscape. It was once a sea floor and many processes combined to make the hoodoos what they are today. What's left are spires and formations that look like they were taken straight out of a Dr Seuss book. Half of the fun of wandering among the hoodoos is to see figures and pictures in their shapes. In one day we saw kissing camels, the Swedish Chef, Queen Elizabeth, the Road Runner, and many others (I seemed to be seeing a lot of Muppets, but maybe that's just me).

We used every minute of daylight available to us, doing some hiking from the rim down to the hoodoos, as well as doing the touristy thing and stopping at every viewpoint with our cameras. The hoodoos were obviously the highlight of the day, but we did have the excitement of seeing a Ring-Tailed Cat - supposedly related to the raccoon, it sure behaved more like a house cat, watching us curiously from a tree while we snapped photos.

Having scoped out the park, we figured out where we would catch a good sunrise and we came back the following morning before the sun came up. From Bryce Point I saw the best sunrise I've seen - it was a beautiful sunrise by itself, and the glowing hoodoos were just icing on the cake. We had to be back in Vegas by that evening, so we left Bryce after sunrise and took a scenic route back to highway 15, driving through Cedar Breaks National Monument for our last hoodoo fix.

Click on the photo above for the enormous photo album from Bryce. Next up: Death Valley!