It’s a Conspiracy – Panguitch, UT, USA – Bryce National Park, July 14, 2022

We were still worn out from our walk through the Narrows yesterday but had to push on since there were no more hotels in Zion. So off we went to Bryce National Park. We arrived about noon and decided to do a drive through the park & Dixie National Forest for starters since neither of us were interested in hiking. The park was lovely, but I almost felt bad since I was too tired after seeing Zion, and had a hard time summoning the proper set of ooh’s and ahh’s it probably deserved. I kind of wish I had come here first, then Zion. At least we didn’t fly into the oh-so-technical Bryce Airport with it’s top notch security and we did avoid all the prairie dogs!

Then, on our way to find a hotel which was more of a process than we wanted, it started to rain.  I swear the rain God, Heat Fairy, and what’s that guy from Allstate…Mayhem?  It’s a conspiracy and they are all in it together.  But we did manage to find a motel.  You heard right, motel complete with 1950’s pink & green tile and original prison sink.  I forget how much having a separate faucet for hot and one for cold is a pain, but it was clean, so we stayed.

The next morning after we had dried out, we headed over to hike and give Bryce it’s fair shake. We hiked the Queen’s Garden trail to Navajo Loop though “Wall Street.” Which really means we got up close and personal with the Hoodoos. While a hoodoo is a religious practice in the Caribbean, it’s a pinnacle of weathered rock here in the US. They were beautiful and I take back what I said earlier about the ohhing and aahing. Even the Red Canyon is lovely and the dirt is a very firey orange instead of the reddish purple we had seen in New Mexico and Sedona.

One surprising thing about the park was the amount if fire damage we saw here.  It was considerably more than anywhere else.  The “Left Fork” fire had damaged over 4,000 acres of Dixie National Forest which overlaps with Bryce Canyon.  I also learned that the designation of national forest doesn’t have the same protections as a national park.  In a national forest, resources are managed for sustainability, but they can be removed from the park.  For example, there is logging in Dixie National Forest which is not allowed in Bryce National Park where no resources can’t be taken.  There are 154 National forests & grasslands in the US which occupy 8.5% of U.S. land and is roughly the size of Texas.