Bryce Canyon in the sun

View from Bryce Point

We woke up in a fog this morning. I guess it’s a good day for doing laundry, which we have to do anyway. The fog lasted till about noon, followed by cloudy skies and then finally the sun came out about 3 PM. We went back into Bryce Canyon to take in all the viewpoints. With the mix of sun and clouds the colors really came out. We went back to Agua Canyon where yesterday the spires were in cloud and were able to see miles into the distance. The terrain around here certainly has a lot of cliffs and canyons. The mix of clouds and sun really made for interesting views. The top viewpoint for me was Bryce Point with almost a city of towers of red, browns, yellows, and white. At Sunset point I decided to take the Navajo loop trail into the canyon. What a different perspective to see all these hoodoos from below instead of above. And then the narrow canyon that I hiked down was deep in shadow from this now sunny day, making for really deep reds and browns. This was supposed to be a 1.2 mile loop, but it turned out to be a 1.6 mile back and forth. I bumped into some of the trail maintainers and they pointed out that a huge rock had fallen down on the trek back. The rock was 6 feet wide and 10 feet high, blocking the slot canyon on the way up. They have to bring in jack hammers and it will probably take 2 days to remove the rock. They pointed out that for this part of the trail has actually been closed most of the year, they finally opened it up only a few weeks ago, to be closed again by a rock that fell yesterday. It was really exciting to see the hoodoos from this different viewpoint.

Down the Navajo Trail