Bryce Canyon National Park

Visited:  June 2016

Duration: 1.5 days

Accommodations: Bryce Country Cabins, Tropic Utah

Our third park of National park trip Season 1, and our most favorite.  We left Moab in the morning and got to Bryce Canyon right after lunch.  It was a beautiful drive down Hwy 89.  Lots of windy streams that followed along with the road surrounded by beautiful tall evergreens. Utah has to be one of the most beautiful places in the USA.

Our first stop in Bryce was at Bryce Canyon Lodge, this was the check in point for our Mule ride through the canyon.  We booked this through Canyon Trail Rides. Before we knew it we were on our mules and off into what would be some of the most spectacular views I have seen on a mule. We own mules and ride all over the midwest, this was so different and unique I couldn’t stop taking pictures. Just look at these views! We definitely aren’t in Iowa anymore.

Our trail boss was Josh, he did a magnificent job leading us around and teaching us all about the wildlife at Bryce and how there has never been a fire at this National Park. The trees have been struck by lighting and that is why they look like this, the kids found all of this very interesting. Fun and educational way to see the park, I highly recommend.

After our wonderful trail ride through the park we stopped off at the Visitor Center to gather some info on what we wanted to do the next day. We watched the short film. We grabbed Junior Ranger books and took them with. But we thought doing the “Hike the Hoodoos” challenge appeared more captivating to us than the Junior Rangers so we didn’t complete those books.

We checked in to Bryce Country Cabins, unloaded our things and headed into Tropic for some outstanding pizza at The Pizza Place. Great food, excellent atmosphere and a beautiful view. Great choice by us 🙂 We headed back to our cabin to enjoy. I had a few adult beverages on my swing behind my cabin with a little fire, the kids played on the play set with some other kids. A perfect relaxing evening.

Day 2

Up and at em. Cereal for breakfast on our deck. Then we headed to the park.  I happened to notice a trail head on our way last night from Bryce in to Tropic. This trail was on the Hike the Hoodoo challenge.  When we hit it, in the morning there were very few cars there (just how we like it).  This was the Mossy Cave Trail and was my absolute favorite trail we embarked upon on our visit to Bryce. It had everything, a cave, streams, waterfalls, hoodoos, vegetation and more.  I couldn’t ask for anything else.

This trail was amazing.  I highly recommend it.

We then headed into the park and drove all the way to the end of the park road. This is called Rainbow point and held another Hike the hoodoos challenge trail we did called The Bristlecone Loop trail. This one wasn’t as awesome as the Cave trail but still had stunning views and pretty cool stops on the way. Short trail for kids or people who aren’t hiking fans. Very easy and mostly flat trails. Check out some of the sites we saw along our hike here.

We hopped back in the car and proceeded to wind our way back along the park road stopping at all points of interest (there are 18 of them).  Natural Bridge and Fairyland point being our favorites.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat at a not so great place (I won’t mention the name). Headed back into the park for our 3rd and final hike to complete our challenge. This time we did the Navajo Loop Trail. This trail was awesome, a little challenging in that we didn’t bring water, but we made it. We went down the hard way and came up the easier way. We met lots of fun people on this trail and took our time enjoying the views.  They were unreal on the this hike. Check it out.

What a great trail. We felt accomplished after this. We walked along the rim trail to check out Thor’s hammer and just enjoy time outside at the park until dark. We made a pitstop for Ice Cream and shopping on the way out of Bryce. Great little stores to walk through. We then called it a day and headed back to Tropic for a good nights sleep before packing up and heading to Zion.

We stopped off at Dixie National Forest on the way to Zion the next day. The Visitor Center was awesome.  Great park rangers and the kids got frisbees, chapstick, stickers and lots of goodies from them.  It is worth a stop 🙂

Bryce Canyon was everyone’s favorite park of Season 1 trip and it is easy to see why.  I would recommend a visit to Bryce Canyon for everyone.  Trips can range from 1-7 days. You can see a lot of things with a 1 day trip, but if you have time you could keep busy for 5-7 days and get to see much more. I hope you all enjoyed our trip, please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions because I’m sure this will be a park we revisit. Thanks for stopping by!

Another cancellation in the books!! This was our car decal we all earned Hiking the Hoodoos!!