Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon

Looking up at Zion National Park

SUNDAY APRIL 26, 2009 - Again this morning we were up bright and early and got ready for our adventures in Zion National Park in the morning and Bryce Canyon in the afternoon. These two mountainous areas are part of a long distance chain that are linked with Grand Canyon with Bryce to the North, Zion in the middle and The Grand Canyon to the South. We were too early for the motel breakfast so we ate what we had in our room and by 7:15 am we were on our way for our day’s adventure. About five minutes from our motel, we observed two deer that were alongside the road. One of the deer started to cross our path, I wasn’t driving too fast and managed to swerv the car to the left and just barely missed the animal. As I looked into the rear view mirror past the deer, it was redressing his head like it may have been brushed against the car but we didn’t hear anything nor was there any sign on the car that it touched the deer. This was a very very close call

After our arrival in the park, we boarded a bus which shuttles tourists on a seven mile adventure in the canyon. Unlike the Grand Canyon where visitors view everything from the rim looking down, Zion’s tour is at the bottom of the canyon and visitors view everything looking up and what a difference that is. The shuttle stops at seven viewing locations and there are many trail that can be explored. We stayed on the bus till the last stop and then took a trail that took us about another mile and a half up river in the canyon.

Before we started our tour I said to Rosella the this day would probably be a day of déjà-vu since we have been in mountainous terrain for the past two months and have been on many site seeing drives around the Southwest and she concurred. Boy, were we ever wrong, this was another incredible adventure. Picture looking up straight walls of mountains that shoot up in the sky for up to 5,000 feet.

Terrain on the other side of the Zion tunnel

We stopped at other locations along the shuttle route admiring the gorgeous surroundings and ended our journey walking along another 2 mile trail which too us back to the information centre. After that we departed driving through the rest of the park on our way for a 100 mile trek to Bryce Canyon. The winding road for the first 15 miles going up to the top of the canyon was awesome and we travelled through a 1.1 mile tunnel which was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in 1932. On the other side of the tunnel, the terrain changed drastically.

The INCREDIBLE Bryce Canyon

We arrived at Bryce Canyon shortly after 2:30 pm, just after stopping at a restaurant for something to eat. Unlike Zion or the Grand Canyon for that matter, cars are allowed to travel from one viewing site to another.

Dripping sandcastles at Bryce Canyon

We started our adventure at an area called the Sunset Viewpoint. We parked the car and made our way to the edge of the canyon and holly cow, what a surprise we had. Looking down into the canyon, the terrain is multi coloured but mostly an orange red much like the soil on PEI and cement grey. It is composed of countless peaks of weathered, worn out sandstone that look like they were formed by someone high up in the sky dripping wet sand in the mountain cavities forming dripping candcastles. This results in these incredible peaked rock formations that look like they could be made of cake icing and go on for miles and miles. We walked up and around about several lookout points located at 8,000 ft above sea level along the rim of the canyon and of course we took a ton of pictures.

This was ......... hold on now ......... you won’t believe this ........... are you ready .......... another unbelievable day of incredible adventures!