Rowena Jayne

Travel

Bryce Canyon National Park | Top things to do in Utah

Bryce Canyon
 

To kick off the trip, we flew to Salt Lake City and drove straight to South Utah.

Our first stop was at this adorable little village of log cabins in Tropic, within maybe 30 minutes of Bryce. I say "village", but really it was a tiny park on one road with a handful of buildings nearby.

I've always thought that the UK makes for a pretty stunning road trip, but driving through here was something else. One of my favourite things about Utah was spotting these massive letters in the sides of mountains—apparently that's a thing there.

I recently learned that Bryce Canyon is actually a lie—it's not a canyon at all, rather a whole load of giant, natural amphitheatres. The rock formations that stick out of the ground like gargantuan stalagmites are called "hoodoos", which I love. (Yes, we sang "hoodoo, you do, do what?" about a thousand times.)

They were formed by ice and steam erosion and come from the Cretaceous and Cenozoic era. I have no idea really what either of those time periods mean, except that "Cenozoic" comes from the Greek for "new" and "animal", which helps. Also, the word made me think of "Cenobite", which I guess would be Greek "new" and Old English "pierce or cut with teeth."

Anything red and brown gets its colour from hematite (iron) and the yellow from limonite (also iron, but not as old). All of Bryce is part of the Grand Staircase, which is both epic name and span.

 
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Rowena Harris