Bryce Canyon, Utah

Bryce Canyon is only about 75 miles north east of Zion, but it's at a much higher elevation, so the relatively short trip between the two offers a world of difference in terms of landscape, colour and weather.

As soon as we got out of Zion we had a long, steep climb to contend with.  Fortunately some time ago, someone had had the bright idea of digging a tunnel to mitigate what would otherwise have been an impossible journey over the top of a huge mountain.  It was not a particularly wide tunnel though.  In fact when the park staff saw us coming, they had to radio the other end and stop any other traffic coming through so that we could just drive down the middle, something they apparently have to do for any large vehicle.

After a couple of miles of chanting "Please don't break down now", "Please don't break down now", we emerged with relief at the other end of the tunnel and from there it was a fairly short excursion to Bryce.  On the way, the increasingly large patches of snow on the ground hinted at how dramatically the climate was changing compared to the desert-like conditions of southern Zion.

It was early November by now and night-time temperatures were expected to be sub-zero every night.  Fortunately, we're equipped with a fairly powerful gas furnace which would keep us nice and toasty.  Well, it would if it hadn't chosen this exact moment, as we prepared to experience the coldest temperatures since Alaska, to break.

I'm not even going to bore you with the details any more.  From now on, just assume that every time I start the engine or switch anything on inside the RV, it breaks.  On the upside, every time something's broken I've fixed and upgraded it, so whoever buys this thing from us at the end of our trip is basically going to be getting a brand new RV!

We survived the cold nights fairly comfortably to be honest.  It doesn't take too long to heat up a relatively small space just by using the oven, and Sharon often says that I radiate heat anyway (possibly a subtle way of telling me I'm full of hot air), so we were OK.

It doesn't take too long to see what Bryce has to offer, but that doesn't detract from how impressive it is.  The main attraction is Bryce Canyon itself, which is not so much a canyon as a huge natural amphitheatre filled with orange sandstone monoliths, formed over tens of millions of years by frost weathering and sedimentary erosion.

I love the dusting of snow you can see on the peaks and cliffsides.  It feels like a rare and unique thing to see such vivid orange and white next to each other like that in nature.

We walked the Navajo Trail down into the canyon and saw the area from a completely different perspective.

 

It felt like a short way down, but I nearly keeled over on the way back up.  We were at an elevation of about 8000ft here and the air felt much thinner.  I stopped for a while and pondered whether it was normal to be able to feel my pulse in my teeth and see all the blood vessels in my own eyeballs.

We walked back to the RV and when my vision had come back, we set off on the 18 mile scenic drive towards Rainbow Point, the highest point in Bryce at just over 9100ft.

On a good day you can see well over 50 miles to Arizona from here.  From nearby Yovimpa Point it's even possible to see the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

All in all, we were pleasantly surprised by Bryce.  It seems to be one of the lesser known scenic attractions in the USA, but I'll never forget standing at the edge of the rim and looking out at the natural skyscrapers of that vast, sandstone city.