Today brought us to the end of our National Park journey. We drove out of Park City, Utah (which is a beautiful destination in its own right), and headed south for Provo, then further on against the Western slopes of the Rocky Mountains and then back through the mountains on our journey to Bryce Canyon.
Your first glimpse of what you are about to see comes on highway 12 through southern Utah. There you meet two striated massive walls of burnt orange rock (the boundary of what is known as "Red Canyon"), and everything beyond it seems to be the surface of Mars. I can't decide which brings out the richness of the evergreen trees more by contrast, Crater Lake's brilliant blue or this prism of rust and orange and pink and white earth.
It seems impossible to surpass the beauty of Red Canyon, but shortly thereafter you enter Bryce Canyon. I must confess I had the Grand Canyon in mind, and I was utterly blown away by how different, and how much more complex and brilliant Bryce Canyon is in comparison to The Grand Canyon. It is not a single canyon so much as it is a dazzling labyrinth of color and shadow and caverns and water and light.
The almost instant reaction on reaching the rim, from all three of my little girls, was "Woooow!" I've never heard them react that way to a TV show or a movie. The shows God puts on are far more impacting. Then they turned their eyes to a trail and insisted that we go on a hike. I know they have been apprehensive about difficult hikes, so I pressed them a bit to be sure, and Charity led the charge down the side of the canyon. We had a couple of falls due to loose gravel, but all told they handled themselves admirably. They got dirty, cried a little after a fall, got up, dusted off and charged forward into the adventure of descending into that flowering garden of stone.
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| First view of the canyon |
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| Always ready for an adventure |
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| Looking out to the east |
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| We climbed into the opening mini canyon |
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| My great hiking companions |
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| We descended deep into the canyon... awesome! |
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| The open space between the walls at the bottom |
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| They each fell at least once, but were ready to pose at the end |
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| Thor's Hammer |
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| The view looking up is amazing |
