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Bryce Canyon National Park was probably one of the best stops of our entire road trip. We hiked a trail down into the hoodoo, drove all the way to the end of the park, went star gazing in one of the darkest places in the US, ate great food, and saw lots of wildlife. Our Bryce Canyon photo set on Flickr has over 190 pictures! By far, the largest set from the trip. With two full nights in our tent, this was also one of the longer single stops we had on the trip.
Rainbow Point at Bryce Canyon National Park
We started our day by driving as far into the park as we could to Rainbow Point.
Rainbow Point was beautiful, but not the most beautiful spot we’d see on our day at Bryce Canyon. After taking some pics and video, we began to work our way back down towards the main part of the park; stopping along the way to see various sites in car pull-offs.
Bryce Canyon National Park Junior Ranger Program
Once we made it back to the main part of the park, we had a Ranger training to attend for the kids to get their Junior Ranger patch/badge for Bryce Canyon.
The talk we attended discussed how the hoodoo at Bryce Canyon were formed and the Ranger giving the talk was the most animated person we’ve ever seen! He was amazing!! Totally kept the kids interested and they learned a ton from him! You can see a bit of his performance in the video from that day.
The cost, for a family of 4 was over $60! We could have eaten at a sit down restaurant inside the Bryce Canyon National Park for about the same cost! In addition to the extortion, the service was awful! I’m pretty sure it was training day…..for everyone that worked there!
Oh well, lesson learned and bellies filled. On to the next adventure of the day!
On our way back to Bryce Canyon National Park, we stopped at a hokey, made-up Western town in Bryce Canyon. It was fun and the shops had some cool stuff for the kids and us. We wanted to get at least one hike in, though, so we did not stay long.
The hike we chose was pretty random. I just looked at the daily newspaper from the park and found one that would take us down into the hoodoo, was a loop, and short enough for the whole family to do. Turns out, that was the Navajo Trail, one of the most if not the most popular trail at Bryce Canyon National Park. This was a fantastic hike and worthy of a post, all it’s own.
After fixing our own dinner at our campsite, we relaxed a bit before heading back to Bryce Canyon National Park for some star gazing in one of the darkest parts of the US to complete our day.
Keep in mind, this last picture was taken at about 11PM at night, with almost no ambient light! It was a cool experience! There are not many truly dark places left in our industrial country, so this was great for the kids to experience true night in a beautiful location.
Bryce Canyon is one of our favorite National Parks in the United States. We are counting down the days until our next visit.