We found a campsite near both of these parks and visited each. Unfortunately, Dawnie wasn’t able to be at Zion due to another commitment so it was me and the boys there. The following day though, the four of us took in a great hike at Bryce Canyon.

What struck me about these areas was how radically different they can be from each other yet they’re not far apart geographically. Zion has its huge solid rock faces reaching high into the sky. Bryce Canyon, on the other hand, offers strange and nearly otherworldly shapes and colors.

Here’s a good example of a Zion mountain. The size of these is hard to adequately describe and many of them appear to be one continuous slab of rock. At one point we could observe hikers on a popular trail which winds its way across the very peak of the mountain. Within a few feet of that trail was a sheer drop which had to be hundreds of feet if not even a thousand or more.

Bryce Canyon, by contrast, extends downward, of course, being a canyon. The vertical pillars throughout the canyon are called “Hoodoos”. These were all created by erosion over time. Once we hiked down into the canyon there were places which felt like we were in another world entirely. Many spots mixed together the reddish-orange hoodoos with tall slender evergreen trees. The contrast of color was striking but so too the contrast between the typical earthly evergreen and the strange almost alien-looking hoodoos.

Striking, all of it. And amazing what nature can create!