Leaving Zion and its wonder behind, we head north-east to Bryce Canyon national park. We get there in a few hours and set up camp in no time, we’re getting really good at it ;) We plan on having a nice camp fire tonight and it looks like a very good idea since it’ll be on the cold side tonight. Camp fire means s’mores of course but also light painting and beer. All that activity keeps us warm and it’s a good thing because the temperature keeps on dropping. When we go to bed it’s below 0C… it’ll go down to -5C during the night! We have decent sleeping bags but our tents are not meant for these temperatures and the least we can say is that we don’t enjoy the night. We’ll light a fire at break of day and everyone will come near the fire to warm up.
We break camp quickly and head to the trail with the very poetic name of Fairyland loop. It’s 8 miles long with 300m of height difference. The trail head is next to the visitor center which has showers!!! Something to look forward to after the hike… considering that the last few days we had little access to hygiene. The first hour we are very slow. We stop all the time to enjoy the view and take pictures. It’s very different from Zion but beautiful too. It’s a natural amphitheater dug by erosion. Some of the stones are tougher than others so it leaves columns of stone here and there named “hoodoos”. All of it has a very unique red tint because of the presence of iron oxide in the rock. The base of the towers is redder than the top since it’s being washed away by the rain.
The trail leads up down into the valley. This hike is free of tourists and the silence is only broken by hips, knees and ankle creaking. We can tell we’re not 20 anymore… (You can shed a tear or two for us, thanks). The hoodoos are stranger and stranger; one looks like a cat, another one has a window in it, a third one is a natural bridge and we picnic at its feet. The way back to the visitor center is steep but a hot shower is waiting for us so we don’t flinch. This canyon is not that far away from Zion but it’s so different it feels unreal. You have lots of trails to enjoy the area, no need to test your limits every hike like we do to see interesting stuff ;)
An hour later, everyone is a few shades lighter (and dust free) and we all decide against camping at the same spot again. Freezing your ass two nights in a row… thanks but no thanks. We take the road to Las Vegas looking for a more protected camp site. We stop at Cedar City and rent a little cabin for the night. It’s Sunday night and finding a restaurant in Utah is complicated. The first few ones are closed but we end up finding one open a few miles out of the city. We’re done with the wild part of the trip and we wrap it up on a cliché: camp fire, s’mores… and photography of course.