Bryce Canyon: Hoodoos anyone?

I got a very slow start today. There's nothing like a full day of hiking to keep you from getting up in the morning. I decided therefore not to do another hike in Zion, which all things considered was probably a good idea. To leave Zion, you have to travel through this nifty tunnel that goes through the mountains. On the left is a quick snap of the tunnel as we were going in. Large vehicles need to be escorted, and since there were some RVs in front of me, we got escorted through. The other side has some nice scenery, and the next time I go there, I think I'll spend some time hiking around there.

From there it was a few hours to Bryce Canyon. I kept on getting diverted by interesting sights like Red Rock Canyon, another place I'll have to go to sometime. But I finally made it Bryce, and took their shuttle in.

Bryce is much smaller than Zion and essentially focuses on the Canyon, which is not really a canyon, but an amphitheater, or so they say. I didn't quite catch the difference, but it's still cool. Bryce is made of up hoodoos, which are sandstone cliffs that have been eaten away by continual freezing and unfreezing. By the way, it was much cooler in Bryce that I expected, not much warmer than 70, and tonight it's supposed to get down to 40. Bryce has 200 freezing days a year -- which is a lot, and the constant freezing of water eats away at the rocks. The result are hoodoos which are hard to describe, so I'll just post some pictures. The picture below on the left is a picture of "Thor's Hammer" on the left, and what I think are the "Three Watchmen" on the right.

The hiking in Bryce is basically going down, then coming up. I went to REI before I went on this trip and bought some hiking poles to give my ankle a break, and this was the first time I used them. They definitely helped, although my feet are completely thrashed right now. There are so many fantastic scenes when you do this hiking that I took a billion pictures. I uploaded them all, but really they seem so unnecessary. And I didn't even see about half the park.

There were a lot of animals around, birds especially. But at one point on the Rim Trail, a deer crossed right in front of me. I think we were both startled.

I've decided that Zion and Bryce are basically one trip together. I could probably spend about a week in the two parks combined. I'll definitely have to come back because there's so much of both parks I haven't seen. Luckily, they're really close to SoCal; in fact, it's kind of embarassing that I'm just going to them, but I've become a big fan.

Tomorrow I'm taking a scenic drive up UT-12 through what is supposed to be amazing scenery in the Escalante area. This is supposed to include a 5 mile hike, but my feet are severely blistered. I'm going to moleskin up tomorrow, and see what happens. The day after that I go to Salt Lake City -- I need a little urban renewal I think. These past two days have underlined by status as an urbanite. I love it out here, but what I wouldn't do for a nice museum. :)