What’s orange, peach, and pink and gorgeous all over? Bryce Canyon—today’s We Do America destination! We both visited this park as an extension to a Park City ski trip many years ago. Then, the sherbert-colored hoodoos were frosted with pure white puffs of snow. Today, they glowed in autumnal glory.

This area is called the amphitheater, the most popular part of the park. The formation in the upper left is called “Thor’s Hammer.”

Our previous visit was basically a driving tour of the rim of the canyon. It was freezing and we didn’t have a lot of time to do any exploring. Today, we wanted to get up close and personal with the nooks and crannies of the place. We decided to take the Navajo/Queen’s Garden Loop Trail, the most popular in the park. The path zigzags 600 feet down to the pine-dotted floor of the canyon. We couldn’t wait to get started.

Here you see the dozen or more switchbacks that lead hikers to the canyon floor. And yes, there are a dozen or more that lead hikers back out. Stair Master has nothing on Bryce!

First, we had to find a parking spot. This was more challenging than the hike itself and took almost as long (well, not quite). We made our way to the hiking trail behind a man and woman and their two young girls. That’s when we saw the strangest sight of the day. The father had a leather sheath strapped to his chest with a hunting knife inside. Nope. That’s not the weird part. We had all just about gotten to the trail head when he headed back to his car. A little while later, Billy and I were taking about a hundred photos of the amphitheater when the guy came back. But now he had a pistol in a thigh holster. We wondered what exactly compelled him to go back and get the gun to do a 3-mile, well-traveled hike in the middle of the day. We had our theories…

The trail was a fanciful walk through an orange and cream ombre wonderland. Even the sand and pebble piles displayed sunset shades from light to dark. Looking up at the 200-foot-tall hoodoos was a fantastically magical experience. The whole place glowed with a peach light. Truly, there is no place like it. Even the 600-foot haul back out of canyon was pleasant with so much to look at.

I never tire of looking at hoodoos. The photo looks more orange than they were. In reality, they were shades of blush pink, light peach, creamy beige, and some maroon.

Billy likes hoodoos, too!

In fact, the hike was so nice, we did it a second time later. I have been collecting rocks from all of our destinations. But, I was so enchanted with our hike, that I forgot to pick a few up. So…we did it again in the reverse direction. It was just as amazing the second time as the first. And there was no guy with a gun (that we know of). I think Billy thought I was insane, but that’s okay. I got my rocks. Lots of them :-).

Part of the trail took us through a narrow space between the bases of huge hoodoos. Look at the pretty pink dirt!

When the sun shines on the stones, they glow. The day was mostly overcast, but the sun peeked out here and there.

Billy taking in the vista on the way back out of the canyon.

I took a ridiculous number of photos today. Anyone who is interested in seeing the same rocks taken from 16 different angles can check out additional photos in my SmugMug gallery (Billy’s gallery is here).

Tomorrow, we head to Page, Arizona to check out the Lake Powell area. We are hoping to take photos in Antelope Canyon, but permits and ranger assistance is required, so we’ll see. Thanks for reading! 🙂