We had been to Bryce Canyon once before and were nearby so it seemed like a fine idea to stop in again. I think we were there for maybe an hour all together (partially affected by wasting time taking pictures of a hawk on a post earlier). It seemed that there were about a dozen people in the entire park at that time and it was pretty cold and windy.
We stopped at several of the overlooks and grabbed a few pictures of the rock formations in the fading daylight. The lighting was incredibly different than the harsh midday sun that we were contending with last time we were in that area and the snow on the tops of the hoodoos was a nice change. Most of the pictures I took are of the Queens Garden area.
The visitor center was closed already on our way in, but we stopped briefly at the lodge on our way out hoping that a gift shop was open, but we missed that by a few minutes.
While we were stopped, we booked a hotel in Cedar City. I don’t remember the exact motivation for that area, other than it had been a larger city we drove through a few days earlier while heading north and was a reasonable distance away. Turns out, it’s also over a mountain range, was heading into a storm and Tom Tom was completely unaware that we were driving a Prius.
I really have no idea how far through the mountains we got though I think we made it past a small lake as you can see on the map. The visibility was continually deteriorating and the accumulated snow increasing when we came to any clearing in the trees. It got to the point that just knowing where the road went was a challenge, so we stopped and very carefully turned around, which was a challenge for us since we didn’t exactly know where the road was and a challenge for the front wheel drive Prius since the tires were now all cutting their own tracks. We saw two other vehicles while we were up there – a large SUV headed East right as we stopped and a minivan going West right after turning around. The minivan made me wonder if the way was more passable than we thought, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to find out. We ended up driving through Zion and then backtracking some to get to Cedar City. In hindsight, there probably was no point to booking the hotel ahead of time and we could have stayed somewhere further South in the direction of the next day’s travel.
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon Sunset
Bryce Canyon Sunset
Bryce Canyon Sunset
Bryce Canyon Sunset
Map to Cedar City
