September 10, 2025
In my effort to make my posts more bearable to read (as well as to write), I’m going to try a different approach on this post and see how it works out.
After exhausting myself at Zion National Park on Monday, we took a day off on Tuesday.
Wednesday, Brandy decided to take a break from working and join us for a trip to Bryce Canyon National Park.
Bryce Canyon, one of Utah’s five National Parks, is different, for sure. Even the approach to the park felt otherworldly. We traveled through arches that seemed to be portals to another planet and by the time we arrived at the park, it seemed like we’d left Terra Firma.
The park seems to be built primarily around the “Amphitheater”, a large bowl-like canyon in which miles and miles of crazy stone formations and hoodoos are strewn throughout its floor. While the park does extend beyond this feature, this is the only part of it we saw on this adventure.
We decided to take the self-guided shuttle tour offered on the NPS app. The tour has visitors boarding one of its own shuttles like the one we’d ridden in Zion, and stopping at four of the major overlooks surrounding the amphitheater offering differing views of the rock formations below.
Each of the stops offered a short walk to the overlook points and visitors could generally take a stroll beyond those points to gain even more vantage points of the canyon floor.
Between the second and third stops, we stopped for lunch at the The Lodge at Bryce Canyon, a more upscale dining experience than the cafe Christy, Hayden and I had visited at Zion two days prior. The food was good, but the service left a lot to be desired, particularly because, I think, our server was rather elderly. He was experienced, to be sure, but he seemed to be overworked, handling too many tables for his limited capacity. Drinks and requests for condiments, napkins, and the like went forgotten and we found ourselves asking other servers for a second time when needed.
After lunch, we continued on, marveling at the sights from the last two vantage points before boarding the shuttle for the return back to the Visitor’s Center and finishing our trip to Bryce Canyon National Park.
Impression
As mentioned, Bryce Canyon National Park is truly an otherworldly experience. The deeply red-orange hoodoos, especially when viewed from the high vantage point of the canyon rim, provided views unlike anything I had seen on this planet before. I wish we had the opportunity to see more of the park but we had additional plans for that day and needed to get a move-on.
For pictures from Bryce Canyon, be sure to visit my Photo Diary and continue reading about our stop at the Toadstool Hoodoos.
Toadstool Hoodoos
After an hour and a half drive from Bryce Canyon, through Kanab and down Highway 89, we found ourselves at the trailhead for the Toadstool Hoodoos.
The ethereal Martian-like feelings we had in Bryce were only amplified during our time on this trail. We wound through a wash with hills towering above us, the narrow, deep ravine with sharply angled walls on either side.
The day was slowly starting to slip away from us and the hills cast eerie shadows over us as we made our way up the near mile-long trail to the feature attraction.
The hoodoos were scattered about a plain at the end of the trail, some of them short and stubby and some of them tall and slender. There was a larger formation in the middle of the spires that could easily have been the lair of some otherworldly creature in a sci-fi flick from the 60s.
We wandered up and through the formations, taking pictures along the way, then began our return hike to the truck.
An hour later, we were back at the AirBnB where we recounted our adventures and called it an early night.
Pictures from this short trip are on my Photo Diary as well.
Conclusion
After witnessing the overpowering majesty of Zion National Park, the trips on this day were a completely different beast. These stops took us on an adventure on a planet not our own. I had read that these iconic locations would seemingly take us to, say Mars, or the moon, but I had no idea how accurate those statements were.
I would love to return to the area and see more of Bryce Canyon but until then, I always have this visit.
Next up, read about my solo hike through the catalyzing slot canyon that brought us to southern Utah to begin with.
-Phil