Bryce National Park

The map from Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon to Zion can be shown on the map below. 15 is the Grand Canyon, 16 is Bryce Canyon and 17 is Zion National Park. Again, the light blue shows the bus route and the dark blue is the track set down by mp GPS. They will differ today from time to time.

The dam changed Glen Canyon, a favorite rock climbing area ...

into the Lake Powell resort. It made many of my graduate student buddies very angry. They started filling it just when I finished my graduate study at Boulder, Colorado.

But on with our trip. The map on the right shows us the Bryce Canyon National Park. Those of you on the bus tour will recognize Ruby's Inn. We actually stayed in the park at the Sunrise Lodge. The dark blue line is the actual GPS trail of our next morning's drive through the park. The first pictures below are taken before we arrived at our lodge.

This photo stop was 4:45 PM.

The above spectacular scene was taken at 5:15, a half hour later.

The above picture was taken also at 5:15. My favorite picture is the one on the right, drinking a glass of scotch at 6:45 PM. The lodge was very comfortable with a deck and two barely comfortable wire chairs. The scotch, the wheat thins and cheese made it a very nice event. Not sure where we ate dinner that evening. On our own, we frequently ate in.

Before we leave the Grand Canyon, let's stop on the way out and take some parting shots of this most Grand geological wonder perhaps in the world.

Not numbered on this map is the Glen Canyon dam (above) and is at the town of Page on the map left.

Note how low the water level is. It's been very dry in the West.

The next morning, (Day 12) we were off to our drive south. Scroll up to the map to see the blue line to see where our actually drive took us. This is Rainbow Point.

We left at 8:30, and by 9, we arrived at our first photo stop

To get an idea of what we were viewing, see below. Sorry about the curvature of the earth, but stitching photos does that.

This was only 30 minutes into our drive.

The next pictures were taken ten minutes later -- clearly a drive or a short walk. .

Change of pace. Bill shouted, "Wildlife on left". Elaine got it!

The valley, surrounded by hoodoos in several pictures above, is shown below in one stitch of two pictures.

Whoops! I talked about hoodoos but never properly defined them. The sign below talks about the name given to the tall, yellow rock formation that is the signature of Bryce Canyon.