Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

After a mostly rainy previous day, the 10^th day of our epic family travel adventure would start and end with beautiful weather and unbelievable landscapes.

We only scheduled this one day for Zion National Park and can say with hindsight that this was nowhere near enough time.  This turned out to be my favorite of all the national parks we visited.

First up, as always, we headed for the visitor center to get the Junior Ranger program books.  On the way into the park, we went through the 1.1 mile Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel!  This was an amazing tunnel that took several years to complete, being dedicated on July 4, 1930.  It’s remained largely unchanged since 1930, with only some additional reinforcement added due to the eroding sandstone.

This made Kelly want to see more and more tunnels!  It kind of became one of the themes for the whole trip. 🙂

We continued winding our way down into the valley of Zion National Park and made our way to the main visitor center.  The parking lot was extremely full, even early in the morning and there was already quite a line, inside the visitor center to speak to a park ranger and get our Junior Ranger programs.

One of the requirements of most of the National Park Junior Ranger programs is to attend a ranger-led program.  With our limited schedule at Zion, we needed to get this requirement out of the way early and there happened to be one starting, but there wasn’t much time for us to ride the bus up to the program location!  We had to pray that we would catch a bus and not be stuck waiting at a bus stop!

Fortunately, we walked right on to a bus as it was leaving (well, more ran onto the bus!) and it’s first stop was the Zion Human History Museum — right where we needed to be for our ranger program!

We learned about the smaller animals that Zion had to offer and then continued back to the visitor center to finish the Junior Ranger program and get some lunch.

With a limited amount of time, we decided to take the bus only up to the Zion Lodge for lunch and hike the Lower Emerald Pools Trail.

After the Lower Emerald Pools Trail, we needed to begin our trek back out of the valley to our car and start out for Bryce Canyon.

At Bryce Canyon, we stayed at a local campground with wi-fi and showers! It was about 15-10 minutes outside Bryce Canyon National Park and a very nice place to stay for two nights.

On the way to Bryce Canyon, we passed through Red Canyon. Red Canyon is part of the larger Dixie National Forest, but it’s famous for having given shelter to Butch Cassidy. Cassidy was in Panguitch at a dance he got into a brawl over a girl. Cassidy thought he killed the fellow and fled to the craggy land where Red Canyon is today.  Turns out the man he knocked out was just fine, but a posse was already sent out after Cassidy. He eluded them by hiding along what is now known as the Cassidy Trail. Red Canyon is located on Scenic Byway 12, right on the way to Bryce Canyon. I wish we could have come back and spent some time in this hidden gem. I’d never even heard of it before this trip, but it was absolutely spectacular to drive through it!

Once we were settled in our Bryce Canyon campsite, we headed into “town” to see what we might find for dinner. Answer: not much. However, the Bryce Canyon National Park was still open and there were a couple restaurants open, so we thought we’d try one out. We ended up going to the Bryce Canyon Lodge and eating in their dining room. The Lodge was beautiful and the food was good with some exotic options, like a bison burger.

After dinner, we decided to walk out onto the back porch of the lodge and sit a spell. 🙂

From there, we could see a trail leading off in the distance. What the heck? We’re on an epic family adventure, let’s check out where it goes. We were delightfully surprised with the view just over the ridge!

It was an amazing end to the day. From waking up in a covered wagon, heading out to Zion National Park and all the adventures that awaited us there, Red Canyon, and finally, Bryce Canyon National Park. It was truly spectacular!