Been Gone

Just got back from a great trip to Bryce Canyon in Utah, one of the most beautiful places we've ever been.  Flew from Savannah to Atlanta ( all Delta flights go through Atlanta even if you're flying from NYC to Boston), then Atlanta to Salt Lake City and from there to St. George, Utah.  We got there around 6 pm and picked up our rental car.  Now I don't want to say that the Nissen Versa is a bad car, I mean after all it had a trunk big enough to carry all of our bags, got great gas mileage and  got us to where we were going and back, but dang, climbing mountains at 5 mph is not much fun.
Anyway, from St. George we had about a 150 mile drive to where we were staying ( Tropic, Utah), a wide place in the road about 10 miles from the entrance to Bryce Canyon.  Took us about 2 1/2 hours to get there ( the speed limit in Utah on the open road is 80 mph), but we were beat by the time we got there and literally just fell into bed.
The next morning, bright and early, we took off to the park, used our handy senior pass  and got in free.  To say we were blown away by the views is an understatement.  I'm going to borrow a British expression, we were gob smacked.  The canyon was incredible!!!!  Two years ago we'd visited Zion Park in Utah and really enjoyed it, but in comparison to Bryce it is a rather small canyon.  You drive through it easily.  Bryce is immense and you view it from the rim, like the Grand Canyon.

Bryce View

The park is named for Ebenezar Bryce, a Scotsman who became a Morman

This is just a small part of the canyon

We then drove up to see the famous Arch.

Arch

We then continued on to an elevation of 9100 ft to Rainbow Point.  We were tired of the car by then and did a mile walk along the Bristlecomb Trail.  A mile doesn't sound far, but at 9100 ft, with ups and downs it was plenty.

Rest stop on the trail
Outside of Rangers and people working at Information Centers we heard very little English, most of the tourists were Europeans, loads of Germans, French, Scandinavians and middle Europeans.  Nice to know they're helping to pay and take care of our parks.
Tomorrow we'll talk trout fishing, ATV rides, Hoodoos and Kodachrome Basin State Park.