Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce Canyon amphitheatre from Sunset Point

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The carving of Kalob Canyon pales in comparison with Bryce Canyon, part of which is a huge natural amphitheatre of ‘hoodoos’ - strange shroud like shapes carved by the sandy wind over time. No photo can prepare you for the sight which is an incredible palette of oranges from burnt umber to ochre, shot through with pure white limestone.

After catching our breaths we took the Queens Garden hiking trail down into the hoodoos, a steep but rewarding walk through the spooky shapes. We then did the Navajo loop hike round and up the side of the amphitheatre before reaching the top again a few hours later. It really is a stunning landscape, you can’t quite believe you’re still on the same planet, it is so alien.

By the time we had done our walks it was almost time for the sun to set so we headed over to Inspiration Point which gave us a great view of the sun setting over the canyon. We really wanted to stay til it got properly dark as the park is meant to be one of the best places in the world to star gaze, so we got some snacks and ate them in the car whilst pondering on the proximity of mountain lions (who eat some of the deer we saw in the park), witches and werewolves as the sky darkened to black.

hoodoos

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When we were all thoroughly spooked we got out and went up to a viewing point over the canyon and looked up. I have never seen so many stars, it really was mind blowing. The Milky Way was splashed across the sky really brightly and for every star that looked familiar there were a hundred more that didn’t. Jont and I really felt our ignorance of the star constellations as we tried to point a few out to the boys - who shrugged off our explanations to make up their own “look that one’s a diamond! There’s a big saucepan!” etc. Probably for the best, I’m not sure that our explanations were a 100% accurate either. To top off the evening - also Guy Fawkes night in the UK - we saw three shooting stars, which made Jont’s day.

Sidebar: the drive to Bryce was 1.5 hours and this is cowboy country so we had plenty of opportunity to listen to the only kind of music you can hear on the radio: country and western. There are a lot of songs about kids (sample “my little boy was praying to the lord like he was talking to a friend”) which I hate (because they make me well up), and some extremely amusing ones about a man’s love for his truck (sample “me and my pick up truck / nowadays we don’t pick up much”) or someone’s self destructive drinking (sample “if I have one, I’ll have thirteen / then I’m the world’s greatest lover and a dancing machine”) sprinkled with liberal Kenny Rogers (BTW still on for the karaoke duet JimJam) and fantastic DJs (sample “if you like country - we’ve got you covered”). The weird thing is, I’m getting these powerful urges to buy some cowboy boots and I don’t know how much longer I can resist...