USA Road Trip Day 9… Orderville > Bryce Park > Escalante

The morning dawns crystal clear….the temperature is cool with the promise of another wonderfull day albeit full day:

Quick breakfast and we bid adieu to our hosts…..heading towards Bryce National Park, along the way we will be passing Red Canyon State Park ….a beautiful park in its own right…

….At Bryce our intention is to take a combination of trails down from the rim of the Amphitheatre, onto the floor where we can get up close and personnel with the hoodoos, which are the raison d’être for this park. From Sunset Point we will hike down Wall Street and join the Navajo Trail which will lead us through the Amphitheatre and connect with the Queen’s Garden Trail to take us back up to the rim of the cayon …..this should take between 2 and 3 hours.

To give the reader a sense of perspective the Amphitheater is 12 miles (19 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide and 800 feet (240 m) deep……it contains the largest concentration of hoodoos in the world !! A hoodoo (also called a tent rock, fairy chimney or earth pyramid) is a tall, thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. … generally formed within sedimentary rock and volcanic rock formations.

Enough stats and background….the place is simply INCREDIBLE….the following pics are from the rim of the Amphitheatre…

We got a bit of a later start than anticipated and it is getting warm, with lots of tourists pouring out of buses….in any event we start down Wall Street along with a French tour group….

…..from the floor looking up the view of the rim

Through the cleft and onto the floor of the Amphitheatre we stare in awe at the scenery…

We join the Navajo Trail which tracks through the floor of the Amphitheatre……surrounded on all side by hoodoos, various dramatic and colorful rock formations, offset by stands of pine, juniper and fir….a soothing, almost enchanted walk…

Soon we intersect the Queen Garden Trail which takes us on a moderate climb back to the rim, but not before passing through openings in the rocks with rock sentinels watching carefully over this wonderland…

As we approach the rim we can’t resist a few more pics:

After this wonderful walk we head back to Sunrise Point where we left the car……it has been a definite WOW experience…..we hope the pics show just a fraction of this spectacle which really can only be fully appreciated in person. We then complete the scenic drive to Rainbow Point, which reaches an altitude of over 9000 feet…..some pics below from some of the viewpoints en route, including the dramatic arch at the Natural Arch viewpoint….

It is time to go, we still have several hours of driving to our overnight destination in Escalante UT…….the drive there is spectacular in places ….

With check-in at 16:00 we arrive a few minutes early,and, as it is a self check-in, start unloading the car until we notice a front tire is almost flat…..BUMMER …by sheer happenstance there is a garage across the street and they very graciously help us right away…….a plug and USD 29 and we are mobile…WHEW!!!….will deal with Enterprise when we return the car…….it is definitely time for a beverage !!! The Canyons B&B is our home for the night owned by a Russian Natalia…quite cute and expensive but that seems to be the case in these parts….the biggest complaint on Tripadvisor is that it is constantly booked up.

 

 

 

 

Dinner at the Circle D Eatery….

…… we are craving meat and this is the right place …all local beef….so burgers it is (I settled for a mere 1/2 pounder) and local beer ….DEELICIOUS! Annie lucked out, as we had commented on a bag hook that a lady at the next table had affixed to the table….and when they had finished their meal she came over and gave it to Annie as a gift!! Back to Natalia’s B&B, some blogging and we are seriously done …good night.