Bryce Canyon

Day 4: We bid farewell to Grand Canyon and headed for Bryce Canyon in Utah. We headed out at 7:30ish a.m. and arrived in the afternoon. It was a gorgeous drive and we took several stops to take pictures on the road, which is why it took so long. En route, we stopped at a cave run by a family who had bought the surrounding ten acres. The first generation originally used one half of the cave as a tavern and the other half as a dance hall. Today, it includes a museum of collected ancient Hopi pottery on the land as well as florescent minerals.

Once we arrived at Bryce Canyon, we took a walk along the Rim Trail for about three hours. The brochure stated that the last shuttle would be able to return us to our car at 7:40 p.m. We finished our hike a little after 7 p.m. and took a shuttle at the opposite end of the trail from where we started. Only problem: the shuttles would no longer be returning to the Rim but were only exiting the park! Fariha considered walking the four miles to our car but we ended up at the visitation center where they realized they had made a typo and arranged for a shuttle to drive us to our car. We were very lucky that a driver volunteered to go out of his way to drop us off.

Our hotel is a ten minute drive from Bryce and winds through the canyons along the historic Route 12. It's on the "main street" of Tropic, which has maybe fifteen buildings on either side of the street. Tropic sits at the footsteps of the surrounding canyons and the view is pretty fabulous.