If I were to chose the three top highlights from my recent America mid west trip, Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah and its hoodoos would definitely make the mark. In case you're wondering why Bryce Canyon is so special, and what hoodoos are, let me show you this. It's much easier to show than explain beauty. This is an incredible view, right?
Hoodoo are these stacks of rocks that are formed over millions and millions of years ago. About 40 to 55 million years ago this area was full of water and sediments built up over time creating different layers of rocks. After the water dried up, erosion happened. Some layers of rocks were more easily eroded than others. The rocks start off as big slabs like a wall, then cracks formed in between and eventually you end up with a single tall column which becomes hoodoos. Even on a hoodoo, some layers are eroded quicker than others, and every hoodoo is different from its neighbour. Poetry in Stone, that's how the official brochure describes itself. Now you'll probably understand why this is one of my top 3 favourite highlights.
Change of plans
My original plan was to catch the free shuttle bus provided by the park to Bryce Point and hike 3 miles along the canyon rim trail to Inspiration, Sunset and Sunrise Points. Together these make up the Bryce Amphitheatre. Then we'd drive the 20 miles Southern Scenic Drive to see more hoodoos. Sadly it was forecasted to rain just as we were about to set off, so change of plans. We'd do the Southern Scenic Drive first, then drive to the Bryce Amphitheatre points instead of hiking. Didn't want Snowpea to get wet.
Southern Scenic Drive
We drove straight to the end of the 20 mile Southern Scenice Drive first, then turned back and visited each of the view points. It was easier this way as the canyon and all the view points are on the right side of the road. We just had to pull into the layby and didn't have to cross the road, avoiding all the traffic. The end point of the road is Rainbow Point, this is at 9115ft ASL and it felt like I was on the top of the world. What a great view.
Working back down, I stopped at Ponderosa Point, and had descended 200 ft. The view is the same as before but it's not. I mean I'm looking at the same canyon, and the same group of hoodoos, but they look different at every turn due to the rock formations and angles.
Remember I said hoodoos start as big slabs of wall and are gradually eroded into columns? In between, sometimes, the bottom layers are eroded first but not the top layers. When this happens a bridge, or window is formed. This is what happened here at Natural Bridge creating this stunning view. A massive opening in the millions year old rocks perched at nearly 9000ft high above in the mountains. Absolutely incredible.
When we were at Natural Bridge, the high altitude plus the cold weather, plus the fact we'd been driving a good part of the day to get to Bryce Canyon, was all having an affect on my sister. She was feeling the altitude sickness and had to rest inside the vehicle whilst we all hopped on and off to take photos. The Natural Bridge was so impressive, and luckily we managed to persuade her to get out and take a look. We were glad we did, and so was she.
The Southern Scenic Drive runs along the canyon, it's a little bendy and can go up and down. Farview Point is a little further along from Natural Bridge and we had risen from 8626 ft to 8819ft. It's not called Farview Point for no reason. This is one of the last stunning viewpoints along the drive before we enter the Bryce Amphitheatre area.
Bryce Amphitheatre
Bryce Point was supposed to be the starting point of my short hike at Bryce Canyon but sadly things didn't work out due to weather. But that's fine. The elevation is lower here, but still quite high, and I'm a lot closer to the hoodoos, I can almost reach out to them. JJ. Looking at the hoodoos at a nearer viewpoint gives another perspective,and I was able to see more geological features and how the erosion has effected the areas.
My original intention to hike from Bryce Point to Inspiration Point would be 1.5 miles. In a way I'm glad I didn't have to do that in the end as I was getting a little tired, plus the rain had made the path a little muddy. This gave me more time to admire the views, it was absolutely breathtaking and deinitely my favourite spot out of them all. According to the official website, Inspiration Point provides a birds-eye view of the world's largest collection of rock spires called "hoodoos" found within the Bryce Amphitheater. There's literally hundreds of them here,
Next is Sunset Point, and is 0.7m hike from Inspiration Point. The rock colours here are quite varied ranging from yellow to white and a mix in between. Nature's painting at its best. If you look carefully in the third image below, you can see a couple of people right next to the hoodoos. Apart from the easier canyon rim trail I originally planned to do, there are a couple other moderate ones that you can hike and get much closer to the hoodoo. If I have a chance to come back to Bryce Canyon one day with Snowpea, I'm definitely going to do that.
And finally, coming to the end of my visit at Bryce Canyon, Sunrise Point. The viewpoint offered pretty much a 360 degree view of the canyon looking very far out. Despite its name, and I was here at early evening before sunset, the view was nothing short of spectacular. I imagine if I hung around for another hour or so, the ray of sunset glowing down onto the hoodoos would be an amazing scene. I didn't get to see that, but I did manage to catch a partial rainbow shooting out from the hoodoos. Not a bad way to finish my day at Bryce Canyon. Hope you enjoyed your virtual trip with me.
You can checkout all my travel post on the Pinmapple here or click on Mr Pinmapple below
Congratulations, your post has been added to Pinmapple! 🎉🥳🍍
Did you know you have your own profile map?
And every post has their own map too!
Want to have your post on the map too?
This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.
Wow, that is amazing! I know my friend has been out to Moab Utah, but I never really realized just how beautiful it is. It's good that you held off on the hiking. I think it is easy to underestimate the effects of the elevation out there.
On this particular occasion, I think so too. The weather was a bit wet for hiking along the canyon rim. I could have spent a long time just admiring the view, so fascinating
I know I already commented with my other account, but I just wanted to tell you again how awesome these photos are. Absolutely breath taking!
Thanks, and it was even more stunning seeing it with my own eyes. I don't think I will ever get bored of it
I don't blame you!
Daaaauuuummm that looks incredible. I definitely need to add Utah to my bucket list. I've been seeing and hearing about it more and more lately.
There's the Utah Mighty 5 ( National Parks), I managed to go to 4, definitely worth making the trip to Utah for them. Much closer to homr for you now
Yeah that's true for sure, much closer. That's a major plus
Wow- that is pretty impressive. The views there are just amazing !
It was in deed, we don't get anything like this back home, and certainly not on this scale
These scenes are breathtaking, you did a wonderful job capturing them and also enjoying it all.
Thanks, I'm glad I can share on Hive
I love it!!! Nature is so weird sometimes, and so beautiful. These formations are amazing and all those viewpoints are so well placed ❣️. Hope ypu enjoyed your walk and the whole trip :)
Here in Argentina we have a landscape barely similar to that, from the pictures I see it doesn't look as huge as that one. The province is Catamarca and its name is Villa Vil Castles, I haven't visited this province or this place yet but I hope to do it soon 😃.
This looks so spectacular, the colour variation is great, like a chocolate sponge cake with a layer of cream, topped with more chocolate. You must get to this province to make sure you complete your list and share with us
Now we wait for some loser to copy/paste this as if it's their own. Then it's time for a plagiarist downvoting party!
I'm all ready for them now. But it seems they can only post every 4 or 5 days as the losers don't even have any RC
What awesome formations!
Nature is really amazing!
I wish to see that one day too!
It’s kind of a blessing in disguise that you didn’t hike because you’ll get more tired than usual, and because of that, you got to enjoy the views more. It’s unfortunate for your sister but glad she still enjoyed even a bit.
Luckily my sister's discomfort was quite temporary, once we got down to Bryce amphitheatre she was feeling better. Thanks
Absolutely incredible, stunning, breathtaking views 😍😍😍
The best of all you visit so far, as for me.
!BEER
Still have more to come 😁
View or trade
BEER.Hey @livinguktaiwan, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @zirochka for you. Enjoy it!If you like BEER and want to support us please consider voting @louis.witness on HIVE and on HIVE Engine.
Hiya, @choogirl here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Top 3 in Travel Digest #2221.
Your post has been manually curated by the @pinmapple team. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting other authors like yourself and us so we can keep the project going!
Become part of our travel community:
I fully agree with you, that place is spectacular!!!!. It must be impressive to watch that landscape, feel and see the power of nature in every hoodoo. The images are beautiful. Thanks for taking us with you on this trip. Nice day 🤗.
I've never seen so many hoodoos in one place, am very pleased that I managed to see the very best on my first visit
I'm glad your trip is going so well.
A perfect place for a visit Ma'am. Those canyons are very attractive and people will truly love to went on that place. I wish I could visit that place also. ☺️
You never know what the future holds for you!
Spectacular is an understatement, what amazing sights to experience! I'd never heard of hoodoos, Poetry in Stone is a very apt description, one's imagination can run wild with all the rock formations. That view from the top must have been truly breathtaking!
We live in a wonderful magical world, don't we?
The mind boggles, talk about time immemorial!
Awesome photos @livinguktaiwan.
Sometimes I do wonder how they determine the age, but needless to say, whether it's 1 million or 55 million years, it's a long long time ago
Wonders of God's reation. I wish I can visit and see those wonders myself. l love everything I read. Thankn you. @klassicmyk
I hope you can make it there one day
I wish so but I am commenting from Aba, Abia State of Nigeria
What a great virtual visit to the hoodoos of the Bryce Canyon!
Your description tops ever more the cool and spectacular photos! Besides the weather "surprise" that forced the changing of your initial plans, you could make it the best by discovering special spots, and amazing angles to enfatize the hoodoos uniqueness and amazing high!
I never thought the sight of the hoodoos could be so mesmerising, it's truly amazing
I just imagine myself being there, and had such a "busy" schedule to see so many interesting spots on the same day... I would have to behave, or else, I would loose the all experience!
This place is amazing and so are your pictures 🙂 I would really love to make a road trip through America. Great job 😊
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it