Bryce Canyon

Until last summer when Roger’s sister, Patricia, told us about Bryce Canyon, we had never heard of it. After being here for three days, we can’t understand how anything so beautiful and amazing could have been in the U.S. without us knowing about it.

We hiked several trails down into the Canyon. The trouble with hiking down was, of course, that we then had to hike back up. The treks upward were challenging!

The formations are called hoodoos and were created from thousands and millions of years of erosion and freezing and thawing of water that is caught in pockets in the rocks. The Canyon has an average of 200 nights below freezing each year. Most of those days are above freezing in the daytime. So, a lot of thawing and freezing goes on.

Another core feature in creating the beauty of the canyon is the four types of rock that exists there: limestone, siltstone, dolomite, and mudstone. The different erosion rates of the four types of stone also account for much of the unique look of the hoodoos. So, even though the hoodoos look as though they are largely created by wind, wind actually has very little to do with their formation.

The vibrant coloring of the rocks is due to iron deposits, so basically, it is rust.

One river (and waterfall) flows through the canyon. It is the one gorgeous feature that was not entirely naturally created. Early settlers in the area spent two years digging a canal from a reservoir to the edge of the canyon so they could settle below the canyon. The town of Tropic still exists at the base of the canyon today and the people there still benefit from the man-made river.

Although Roger and I have taken a bunch of pictures, my sister, Judy has taken many more. And, a lot of the really nice shots of Bryce Canyon are hers since she is much more of a serious photographer than we are.