Bryce Canyon & Zion National Parks, UT

There are so many national parks in Utah we had a hard time deciding where to go. In the end elevation won out. The weather has been starting to cool off, warm during the day but just above freezing at night. We're not so excited about the cold so we just picked out a couple of places to go that were slightly lower in elevation. The first being Bryce Canyon.

 There aren't words to adequately describe Bryce Canyon. With it's red hoodoos (odd-shaped pillars of rock left standing from the forces of erosion), the canyon glows in varying shades of red to pink as the sun moves across the sky, painting the landscape with a breathtaking variety of light and shadow.

We walked the trail along the rim then plucked up our courage and decided to try the steep-sided trail loaded with switchbacks that leads down into the canyon. 

 The only downside was that we'd be walking a different, even steeper trail back up. It was totally breathtaking and totally worth it.



From the bottom looking up

From the top looking down 

Luckily we came across a small, inexpensive private campground close to the park and got to spend 2 nights running our little electric space heater to ward off the worst of the cold.

Zion National Park was our second stop. 

We walked a trail which we though was only .5 mile but accidentally got on the wrong trail which turned out to be 3 miles straight up a switchback trail with precipitous drop offs.  At least it was less busy!

This was the first park we've been to so far that had us saying "I'm not so interested in going back."

Why, you ask? Zion is supposed to be beautiful.

At Bryce Canyon you are looking down into the canyon from the rim. At Zion you are looking up from the bottom. Not so easy for taking pictures, these do not show how big and spectacular it is. There is also much less room to accommodate the enormous amount of people who visit the park, We just weren't expecting it to be so busy in the off season.

And to top it off, the parking lots were full – we luckily went into the RV parking lot and found a big spot with a short RV w/ just enough room for our little Toyota in front of it. If we hadn't found that spot, we would have had to park way out in town and take a bus in. All in all, we found Zion to be beautiful but a real disappointment.