Visiting a canyon that isn’t a canyon

Leaving our camp ground behind we set out for Bryce Canyon. Utah has so many parks in this area that you can’t travel 50 miles without running into one.

We made a couple of stops on the way for gas, breakfast, Red Canyon in the Dixie National Forrest, and a post office to get post card postage. Most post offices have extremely limited hours in this part of the country with many only open from 8 – 12.

Bryce Canyon

We arrived at the Bryce Canyon City (town) and took heed of the limited parking signs and parked outside the park. The park offers shuttles from the town into the park. The parking was free and plentiful. We seem to skip the visitor center on our first visit to each park and this one was no different. Bryce Point was the first stop and we took in the geologic spectacle of what we thought was a canyon.

We debated getting back on the bus and going to the next stop and resting our tired legs from yesterday’s hike but it was a beautiful day so we decided to do the rim trail to inspiration point.

Along the way I caught a glimpse of a chipmunk on one of the spires. He looked at me with an expression that I can only describe as impotent rage. He kicked some of the rocks off of the delicate spire as if to demonstrate his lawless nature. Offended and visibly upset, I continued on with the trail.

Inspiration Point

Many of the national parks out here have a spot called inspiration point and Bryce Canyon has three. You get to choose the level of inspiration that you will receive. There is a upper, middle, and lower inspiration point. It’s almost like a Catholic indulgence because your level of inspiration is correlated to how far you want to ascend. Our rim trail took us to each point from highest to lowest and at each lower level we felt inspiration leaving our bodies.

Uninspired we continued on the rim trail to sunset point where we came across a park ranger giving a talk about the parks geology. This is when we learned that the canyon is not a canyon. It was not formed by a river rather by water freezing into ice. The Native Americans called this place “red rocks standing like men in a bowl-shaped canyon”. The spires are called Hoodoos which are tall, thin spires of rock that protrude from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badlands. His talk was very informative and you can tell he was extremely passionate about his work and the parks.

We did get to visitor center as we were leaving and picked up some post cards. We’ll be back tomorrow to do some hiking in the canyon among the Hoodoos.