GRAND, ZION, BRYCE,CANYONLANDS AND ARCHES=CANYONS ROCK!!!! PART II ZION AND BRYCE NATIONAL PARKS

ALL PERSONAL PICTURES AND TEXT ARE COPYRIGHTED BY DON AND SARA SCHULTZ. (ACQUIRED GRAPHICS CREDITED)

Any visit to the Grand Canyon would prompt a desire to see more, but be assured Zion, Bryce, Canyonland and the Arches National Parks could never be described as “more of the same”. Each park is unique in appearance, history and how one explores it. In fact, many visitors find one of these parks along the Grand Staircase of the Colorado Plateau more exciting than the Grand Canyon.

Of the five National Parks in this area we found Bryce to be our favorite but we were thankful we visited all of them. Each park shares a common link, the Colorado River. The Green River which joins the Colorado south of Mohab near Arches and Canyonland, and to a lesser extent, the Freemont and the Dirty Devil rivers, all have had an impact on the geology of the area. Further southwest, the Virgin River which eventually flows to the Colorado was instrumental in the formation of Zion and Bryce.

What follows is a brief description of the history and things to do at each park. Included is how we feel a new visitor could make the most of their visit with “must see” attractions. A few carefully selected pictures of our favorite experiences follow.

ZION NATIONAL PARK

Located approximately 250 miles north and a bit west of the Grand Canyon is Zion National Park. It lies equidistant between the city of Kanab, Utah, from its eastern entrance and St George, Utah, from the western entrance. Don’t make the mistake we did and try to enter the park with a big RV from the east. Vehicles over 37 ft will be sent all the way around (over 120 miles) to the park’s west entrance due to the Mt Carmel Tunnel carved through 1.1 miles of solid rock which is very low and narrow. The little town of Springdale at the west entrance has a great motel and RV park and is within sight of the park’s front gate.

It was the Mormons who requested that the name of the park be changed from Mukuntuweep (a Paiute native peoples word meaning sacred cliffs) to Zion National Monument in 1917. A year later, President Woodrow Wilson declared Zion a National Park. But it was the completion of the famous 1.1 mile Mt. Carmel-Zion Tunnel through solid rock on July 4, 1930 that opened the park to the public. At the time it was the longest highway tunnel in the USA and allowed visitors to travel to Bryce and the Grand Canyon without having to drive out of their way as we did.

While one can travel across the park by auto using the Carmel-Zion Tunnel Road, and it is something every visitor should do just to see this engineering marvel, Zion is a park where you will want to use the shuttle system. In fact, to see the main attractions during the summer, you have to use the shuttle as private vehicles are not allowed on the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive which leads to most of the major attractions.

These free shuttles start at the visitor’s center and run every 7 minutes 6:30 AM to 11 PM from April to October and are the best way to see the park. Among the main attractions at Zion along the Scenic Drive are the Zion Human History Museum, The Great White Throne and Court of the Patriarchs, Zion Lodge and Gift Shop, Weeping Rocks and Hanging Gardens and finally the Narrows.


BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK

Bryce Canyon National Park, the third national park in our climb up the Grand Staircase, is not really a canyon as much as it is a long amphitheatre cut into the edge of the Colorado Plateau. Bryce is not nearly as large or deep as the Grand Canyon and does not have the sky scraping mountain peaks of Zion, but for Sara and me it was our favorite park. At over three miles long, two miles wide and over a thousand feet deep, Bryce’s appeal can be summed up in one word, hoodoos. More about hoodoos later. Also as visitors approach the entrance to the park from the west, they pass through the Red Rock State Park, a must see and are close to Kodachrome Basin State Park 22 miles to the east. We visited both state parks.

Named after an 1870’s Mormon pioneer named Ebenezer Bryce, the park has had many names. Ebenezer and his wife Mary built a farm just below the canyon rim and was reported to have said, “It would be a terrible place to lose a cow!” The Bryces must have lost quite a few cows because they lasted only 5 years. Earlier the Native American tribe, the Paiute, called the canyon several colorful names including Anka-tompi-wawitz-pokitch, which means "many red rocks in a hole" and Anka-ka-was-a-wits which translates to "red painted faces." Perhaps the most fitting, though, translated to "bowl-shaped canyon filled with red rocks standing up like men."

In 1923 President Harding declared Bryce Canyon a National Monument and finally in 1928, a national park was established. Due to the relative isolation, Bryce does not receive nearly as many visitors per year as Grand or Zion but we loved it. The fact that it was less crowded during our visit surely added to its appeal.

But it is the hoodoos, those magical rock formations so unusal and colorful that they are not really found anywhere else on the entire planet, at least not in equal numbers, that makes Bryce what it is. Running out from the plateau rim are countless, tall, red-stone formations that stand up like sentinels. Some are connected as sharp ridges; others have broken away from the rest and stand alone. Erosion has sculptured these formations into fantastic shapes that resemble the work of a surrealist artist.

The 1000 ft thick walls of Bryce were formed from countless layers of sandstone called the Clarion Formation which was laid down over 50 million years ago. The array of colors within the canyon are created by chemical decay. The rock contains small quantities of iron minerals. When the iron oxidizes by being exposed to the air, it produces the rich red colored mineral, hematite, as seen at the Pink Cliffs. The yellow tint, limonite, is produced by water particles reacting with iron particulates. The blue, purple and lavender colors staining the walls are produced by a minute manganese presence. Pure limestone and dolomite rock create the white color. Now the beautiful, natural sculpture has been painted.

Water seeped into cracks in the rock and dissolved the natural cement that bonds the rock particles together. Later, rains washed away those particles and they rushed down the canyon acting like sandpaper to further erode the rock. During the winter water ran in into cracks in the rock and froze, splitting the stone apart.

Conditions along the rim of a canyon were optimal for the work of erosion. Water racing down the steep slopes found natural fault lines in the rock that widened into gullies. The harder rock on either side of the gullies turned into fins. These fins were then subjected to erosion themselves which turned them into tall sets of connected natural columns. Since the layers of which the rocks were formed vary in hardness, lower portions of the columns eroded faster than upper sections, giving them their strange shapes. A fin will eventually have vertical cracks appear in it that may go completely through the rock to create a window or arch. When the window grows big enough to separate a single pillar from the rest of the fin, a solitary hoodoo is formed. (See diagrams in pictures for explanation of hoodoo and arch formation)

But it is the combination of literally thousands of hoodoos that creates a fairy landscape that will cause the park visitor to utter as we often did, from the rim, “Oh my gosh, this is unbelievable!!!” Almost every imaginable form can be found among the massive maze of hoodoos: castles, towers, dragons, whales, demons and devils, some with names like the Chessmen, Thor's Hammer, Tower Bridge, and the Poodle are all there. Many of the columnar hoodoos with their mushroom like heads and phallic like shape nestled among huge boulders suggest names that cannot be printed here, and one can only wonder what kinds of rituals took place amidst their thrusting presence by ancient inhabitants.

A Bryce Canyon National Park visit can best be accomplished by driving or better yet taking the park shuttle system to Bryce Point (Rainbow) at very end of the road boarding the rim. (See Map) Parking is limited at each of the stops and the shuttle is free. Then work your way back toward the entrance and visitor’s center allowing for at least three days to see all the sights. As the sun shines down on the hoodoos, sunrise, sunset and every moment in between is a new experience. Sunrise is unforgettable. Sunset is less dramatic.

Don’t miss Inspiration Point, Wall of Windows, Thor’s Hammer, Sunrise Point, Wall Street, Queen’s Garden, and especially The Arch. But of all the sights at Bryce, it is the Amphitheater that simply cannot, I repeat, cannot, be missed. This visual virtuosity changes minute by minute, hour by hour and by simply moving ones position a few yards a new view is revealed.

Speaking of different views, a trip to the bottom of the canyon at Queen’s Garden is 1.8 miles and can be done in an hour and a half down easy trail unlike the Grand Canyon which is over 7 miles to the Colorado River and usually is done in two days by most. Walking between the hoodoos is a thrill.

The lodge at Bryce National Park has a noon luncheon Taco buffet that is to die for. Surrounded by the majestic Ponderosa Pine Forest, the dining room is a wonderful place to relax and take in the beauty of Bryce and enjoy dining within huge timbered walls of rustic elegance from the 1930s. And at a very reasonable price.

Finally, keep in mind that the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon continue to erode and change. Wind and rain remove the approximate thickness of a sheet of paper each year. In 10,000 years, Bryce Canyon will look significantly different than it does today. Eventually the forces of erosion, which work very slowly, but surely, will wash away the entire attraction. That won't happen for millions of years, That gives you plenty of time to travel to this unique geological region and visit with the hoodoos.