DAY 13
3/31/26 Tuesday
First overcast day, Cold 46’ and cloudy when we woke up. We had a pretty early start out of camp this morning but not before snapping a camp photo.
It was chilly enough to turn the heat on in the car this morning!
Powell’s Point as seen from the highest point on the highway at 7600’. John Wesley Powell’s expedition mapping all this land. In 1869 his group explored the Colorado and Green Rivers from the source to Mexico. We would end up seeing this point from the west side the rest of the day! It is quite prominent.
We stopped in the little town of Tropic at a coffee shop before any other sightseeing today. Cute little town about 10 miles from Bryce National Park. Slightly busy but not crazy. There was a retired local guy who chatted us up. I think this is his go-to spot to visit with tourists and can tell them all the highlights in the area. Nice guy.
Kodachrome Basin State Park. This was a pretty quick trip in and out for us. It was about 9 miles off the highway. Had a busy campground. Looked like it was popular for mountain biking. It is special because it has these landscape features of vertical tubes called sedimentary pipes. Haven’t seen this geological feature yet.
Bryce National Park. Doubling back through Tropic and 10 miles further to Bryce. First we stopped just outside of Bryce Village to check out a dispersed designated camping area in Dixie Forest just a couple miles from the park entrance. There were 26 designated camp sites with quite a bit of spacing (as you would expect for dispersed). We drove a loop and based on the incoming weather tonight…rain and snow… we opted to camp nearer to the highway where the road is the firmest. We don’t need or want to get stuck trying to get out in the morning! Once we chose a sight we strapped out camp chairs to a tree to “save our spot”. Also so the chairs wouldn’t blow away in the wind today.
Off for a Bryce Hike. We chose to hike a 3 mile loop called the Queens Garden Trail to the Wall Street Trail. It was a busy little trail with families, grammas and grampas… all ages and all sizes and many languages.
It was kind of steep going down to the valley where it leveled off before a steep climb back up to the rim edge. Beautiful and stunning as soon as you started walking down the trail. Bryce is definitely unique with its hoodoo sculptured rock!
The hoodoos reminded me of when my kids were little at the beach and we would build drip castles. There are many pictures to enjoy and a videos too. (Video on the website http://www.cinnicrew.com.
It will start to get very busy with people going up and down!!
My favorite view
This trail called Wall Street was a trail building engineering feat through a slot canyon! I was so impressed with the end of this loop trail we took today. All told from the parking, hike and back was almost 5 miles.
Bryce Point. Just when you thought you’d seen such magnificent views we came across one more jaw dropping viewpoint. This one was such a small parking lot they had to have attendants for parking. More on parking later. Now the pictures and a video.
This view is nuts!!
Mother Nature makes a great artist
Historic Hotel and cabins in the park. On our walk back to the car we came across the original old hotel and cabins built by the Union Pacific Railroad to bring tourists to the park. Of all the original hotels in the southwestern parks this is the only one that still exists! It was called the “Grand Circle” included these 6 parks. Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, and the Grand Canyon.
Traffic control in the Park. On April 3 (2 days away) the park goes to a mandatory shuttle to enter the park. You get on the bus at the Bryce Village (2 miles out) and take the shuttle to all the various viewpoints on the park road. If you go in before 8am maybe you can drive but I’m not sure about that! Anyway to encourage people to not drive and avoid wait times of an hour or more there is a pedestrian/bike trail from Bryce Village into the park for 11 miles. We saw today that they are almost ready to pave the last few miles to Bryce Point! They have bike rentals in the park too! We think that’s pretty great. We are hoping to ride most or all of this trail including the 10 miles beyond the park going west. We originally thought we would ride it tomorrow but weather is coming tonight. Expecting rain turning to snow in the morning. Might be too cold and too wet. Expecting 1/2” rain. In the desert that’s a lot! It will be interesting tomorrow. Maybe another hike if that’s possible. We shall see. Stay tuned. We can always bike it Thursday.
Trying to keep up with the price of gas while we’re having an excursion “war” with Iran. Gas at Bryce Village today was $4.49.
We are comfortable at our dispersed camp tonight. We’ve seen only a few other campers… so it’s not high season until April 3. They expect a big crowd since it’s Easter this weekend.
I think Bryce National Park might be my favorite park that I’ve seen. Tough choice between this and Yosemite but I’m not even close to seeing them all. But this one is worth taking a trip to enjoy! Special for sure 😊
cinnicrew 