Southwest National Park Loop- Bryce Canyon National Park
The next morning we headed out early to visit Bryce Canyon National Park. Since this was going to be our longest driving day of 4 hours from Moab Utah to Bryce Canyon. Most of this drive was along the a long boring Interstate 70 with warnings of no gas stations for miles. So we made sure we filled up prior to leaving Moab.
When arriving at Bryce Canyon we drove through the Red Canyon which was also beautiful. We went to the Bryce Canyon lodge check in where we met Babs. (I kid you not her name tag said Babs) The lodge has some issues with staffing. Babs told us she was overwhelmed with people checking in but there was no one else around or in line. She then gets on the phone and told the caller not to call the main desk because they are so busy. Halfway through the call she turns to us and starts talking with us while she is still on the phone. It was very awkward and unprofessional. We decided to go to the little pizza stand to get a bite to eat before heading out hiking. Once again staffing issues that no one knew how to place a order.
After the drama, we headed out hiking the Rim Trail to Sunrise point. We hiked down on the Queen’s Garden Trail. Stopping to marvel at the amazing Hoodoos. Never have we seen anything like this before. The trail then merges with the Navajo Loop Trail to hike out of the canyon via the two bridges. Later we hiked down via Wall Street which was amazing but there were tons of people on these trails.
When we returned to check in we made sure to steer away from drama Babs and ended up with Josie who could not have been nicer and very competent. Our cabin was very cute. It had tow double beds and a bathroom. It was recently updated and you could not beat the location which was just steps from Bryce Canyon.
We then got in our car and drove out to Rainbow point and Yovimpa Point. There was a wildfire near by so the sky had a orange tint which made our pictures look really weird. We drove back stopping at all the interesting points of interest: Black Birch Canyon, Ponderosa Canyon, Aqua Canyon, Natural Bridge, Farview Point, Piracy Point and Swamp Canyon.
Then we headed to Bryce Point and hiked a portion of the Rim Trail. Then drove back to Sunset Point parked our car and walked the Rim trail to Inspiration point during sunset. The views were amazing.
The next morning we hiked a portion of Rim Trail again to see the sunrise.
The other odd incident happened when we were going to check out. Check out time is 11am so we returned from our hike at 10:40am to find a staff member in our room taking our luggage. I explained that I thought we had until 11am to checkout. He thought we were part of a tour group and was going to load our luggage on a bus. Yikes! He said his list still had the cabin part of the tour group and was not updated. We informed him that we were not part of any group. He apologized but once again another awkward moment that didn’t need to happen if the staff was more on top of managing the rooms. Thank goodness we stop him otherwise we might have lost our luggage.
After that we headed back to Las Vegas to hop on our return flight. We saw so much is 6 short days but so thankful to be able to explore and see the world. Even if it is just a short flight away. We can’t wait to come back. Our next trip will include Havasupai Falls, Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim and hopefully returning to Zion to hike the Narrows and Angels Landing in 2018.
This is a continuation of a Southwest National Park Loop blog post series to read more: