Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

December 21, 2014September 1, 2022 - Julie @ A Life Exotic 13 Comments

I know I’ve said it before, but the first full day of our roadtrip (as in, first day we woke up in the van) was absolutely one of my favorites.

After spending the morning in Zion National Park, we drove barely more than an hour northeast to visit the equally incredible Bryce Canyon National Park. This post might be a bit photo-heavy, because I don’t know if I can quite do it justice with words. You might want to stop for a cup of tea halfway through.

Despite being relatively close to Zion, Bryce Canyon receives fewer than half as many visitors per year. Dear everybody: you don’t know what you’re missing!

The main features of the park are those craggy orange pinnacles. Or, if you’re being technical, hoodoos. The hoodoos have been weathered into shape by frost and water over thousands of years.

That big open basin you see above is called Bryce Amphitheater. Aside from being the most visually interesting spectacle in the park, the hoodoos in Bryce Amphitheater had specific meaning to the Paiute tribe who once inhabited the area. Their legends said that the hoodoos were people who had been turned into stone by Coyote, a notorious trickster in Native American mythology.

The area was settled by a small group of Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and one of them, Ebenezer Bryce, built his home right below the main amphitheater. Despite the fact that it’s not actually a canyon, it came to be called “Bryce Canyon” by the other locals. Ebenezer Bryce was a cattle farmer and apparently said that the jagged, winding hoodoos and amphitheaters were a “helluva place to lose a cow.”

The natural amphitheaters are also filled with firs, spruces, and Ponderosa pines, which provide that amazing contrast between the deep green and bright orange.

Gigantic puffy snowclouds rolled in and out, throwing dramatic light and shadows over the rocks and trees.

Visiting all these national parks towards the end of autumn was far and away a great plan. There were so few people around that many times, we felt like we had the views all to ourselves. There was no waiting for parking spaces, jostling through crowds, or trying to crop strangers out of our photos.

However, we did miss out on some of the activities that go on in the summer tourist season. Apparently, rangers give cliffside nature presentations when it’s warmer out!

Not a bad classroom view, eh?

There are a few species of plants in Bryce Canyon that don’t exist anywhere in the world outside of southwest Utah. Bill Nye would have a field day!

You begin at Sunrise Point and can continue along to Sunset, Inspiration, and Bryce Points, slowly gaining elevation with each stop.

The wind got colder, but the views kept getting more and more stunning, so we made a quick (haha, it was not quick at all) stop in one of the parking areas to make tea and coffee on our little propane camp stove. It took me twenty minutes and about the same number of matches, but I am proud to report that after that embarrassing learning experience I was much improved and am now master of portable camp stoves everywhere.

Just look at this landscape. Is this real life?!

Those cartoon clouds finally opened up and starting sprinkling snow flurries on us, so we decided to drive all the way to the highest point of the park and then make our way back down, to see as much as we could before the weather stopped us.

^{(Nabbed this one from Amity)}

Up at Rainbow Point, it was looking like this:

On the way back down, we stopped for the view of the Natural Bridge and made friends with a gigantic raven, who gave us all the news from the Tower of London.

The light. The light!

The snow really started to come down then and we figured we were better off getting out of the park and onto bigger roads, so we headed for the exit and left my favorite park (have you figured out that I’m going to say that every time?) behind.

Driving out through the snowy twilight reminded me of driving through Cairngorms National Park in Scotland just before the sun rose. Total Polar Express environment.

You made it! Sorry about all the pictures. But I’m not actually sorry. Are you?

The Details: $25 entry fee per vehicle | Open year-round with occasional closure due to weather or bears (!) | Website HERE

Zion National Park, Utah

December 10, 2014September 1, 2022 - Julie @ A Life Exotic 6 Comments

It’s nearly impossible to answer when people ask me what my favorite stop on our roadtrip was. How do you choose between the Arizona desert, the Colorado mountains, and the California coast?

However, if they really press me, I usually say that Bryce Canyon (still to come!) and Zion were two of my top spots.

Remember when I said we went to bed in the pitch darkness and were waiting to see what we’d wake up to in the morning? Well, we woke up to this:

The cozy little town of Springdale set against massive, deep red rocks striped with evergreens. Because of the heavy clouds sitting on top of them, we couldn’t even tell how tall they actually were.

Spending the night right on the national park’s doorstep meant that we were all set to go in the morning – after tending to the necessities, of course.

We stopped for breakfast and caffeine at Deep Creek Coffee, which was charming and adorable and set the bar very high for all independent coffee shops to come. The baristas (possibly owners?) were really friendly and we had a good chat about Front Porch and the Outer Banks before Amity and I went on our way.

It was sprinkling as we drove through the park entrance, but that didn’t detract from the views!

After only a few minutes, the rain let up and the foggy clouds very slowly began to lift away from the rocks.

We drove down into Zion Canyon, where there’s a bridge overlooking the rushing river that’s cloudy with rainwater and fine red dirt.

During the winter off-season, the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive is open to private vehicles, so you can drive north of the bridge and take your time seeing some of the park’s most well-known sights, including access to the famous Narrows and Subway gorge hikes. We were there at the very end of the fall season, when the Scenic Drive is open only to shuttle buses, so we decided to skip the lines and big groups in favor of seeing the eastern part of the park on our own.

We forked right and drove up the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, which winds up the sides of the canyon pretty quickly, offering amazing views back down to the canyon floor.

After the road climbs about halfway up the canyon walls, it dives right into them. The Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel was constructed between 1927 and 1930 and is the longest road tunnel in the US National Park system – an engineering marvel!

When you emerge from the tunnel, 1000 feet above the canyon floor, you’re in a different kind of landscape. The jagged peaks give way to rolling hills of rainbow slickrock, sandstone that’s been smoothed and polished by the wind.

A few of Zion’s biggest landmarks are on the east side, such as East Temple (seen from the side here)…

…and Checkerboard Mesa (named for the crisscrossing fissures on the cone):

We left through the East Entrance, knowing we’d left a lot unseen but happy with our few hours in Zion. There was one more surprise for us, though! Barely a mile or two outside of the park exit, we pulled over and scrambled through a few yard of rocks and bushes to find this view staring back at us:

I don’t know what this canyon’s called or if it actually has a name, but it was an exciting roadside find!

Some of it was the first day wonderment of it all, but mostly it was the sheer impressiveness and uniqueness of the landscape that puts Zion near the top of my roadtrip list. Someday I’d love to return and do some of those gorge hikes!

The Details: $25 entry fee per vehicle | Open year-round with a few seasonal road closures | Website HERE

Checking in From the Road!

November 14, 2014September 1, 2022 - Julie @ A Life Exotic 8 Comments

Hello from Casper, Wyoming! We’re about halfway through our three-week roadtrip around the western US and we’ve already had enough adventure for a lifetime. We’ve been through seven national parks in as many states and seen all sorts of weather (-11 degrees F was super fun). We’ve seen canyons and deserts and mountains and lakes and all sorts of crazy wildlife.

(Zion National Park, Utah)

However, as any traveler will tell you, things don’t always go according to plan. We’ve had our fair share of wrenches thrown in the works already but are rerouting about as fast as things can mess themselves up. I’ll have plenty of roadtrip stories and pictures coming up on the blog in the future but for now, a few photos are going up in realtime on Instagram and Facebook because it’s about all I can keep up with before I crash into bed (slash van) at the end of every day.

(Antelope Canyon, Arizona)

I’ve always said that a roadtrip’s too easy if you don’t go through at least three vehicles. Okay, I haven’t. But I definitely say that now.

A Life Exotic

The story of a girl with too many homes

utah

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Zion National Park, Utah

Checking in From the Road!