July 23rd, Bryce Canyon National Park

  

  

  

  





Sunday, July 23, 2006
Day 28
Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce Canyon was about a 79 mile drive from our Cedar City campsite. We thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful drive there. We drove up in elevation from Cedar City at about 4500 feet to a summit of 9910 feet during the drive. Bryce is anywhere from 8000 to about 9000 feet above sea level, so we slowly dropped back down. There were some incredible views and vistas along the drive and we stopped at several places to take photos.

Right before arriving at Bryce, we drove through Red Canyon, which is truly red (in a reddish orange sort of way). The rocks and rock formations are amazingly beautiful. Once in Bryce, we stopped at the visitors’ center and bought souvenirs, postcards, and the kids got their Passports stamped and got stickers for them. Well, we forgot Sheldon’s Passport, that was my fault, and so he just got a sticker for it. Brianna stamped hers and got the sticker too. They used up the pages in the section for the Rocky Mountain Region a while ago, now we just hope they don’t run out of room in the “Additional Stamps” area of the booklet. They really should make the Rocky Mountain Region with more pages, since there are so many popular parks in this region.

Anyway, we also saw a short, 20-minute, film at the Visitors’ Center about Bryce Canyon and the geology of the area. Then we walked through the small museum area which had a nice relief map of the area and showed the Grand Staircase and explained how what we see at Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon is all related. It turns out that we are going to these parks in the “right” order. What we see here at Bryce is the youngest layers of rocks exposed. At Zion more has worn away and we will see older layers. At the Grand Canyon, even more has worn away due to the Colorado River, and so we will be able to see the oldest layers there.

The “bottom” of the exposed area at Bryce is basically the “top” of the remaining layer at Zion, and the “bottom” of the exposed layer at Zion is the “top” of the layers at the Grand Canyon. Hence, the “Grand Staircase”… If you have no idea what I am talking about, the park ranger explained sedimentary rocks like your dirty laundry in your laundry basket. The bottom is the oldest and the top is the youngest of your dirty laundry. If you wash some of the stuff at the top (away) you still have the older layers underneath…

The kids earned their Bryce Canyon badges and we bought them Junior Ranger hats to wear and put all the badges on, because you just can’t wear all those badges on your shirt. It looks dumb, and it bothers Sheldon’s chest I suppose. Plus, this way they won’t get lost so easily.

We didn’t really plan the day too well, since we forgot to bring lunch, and then realized we were starving after we were already inside the park. There was no “reasonable” place to eat in there, so I stuffed down so oatmeal bars that were in the car and had a soda (we remembered those) to tide me over. Brianna had one too, and Sheldon and Rodney just tuffed it out. We drove all the way to the South end of the park (18 miles) to Rainbow point and then started driving back. The turnouts are all on the East side of the road (right side if you are coming back North) so they suggest you drive all the way to the end and do the turnouts (viewpoints) on the way back. That is what we did and it worked out well. We saw some amazing colors and cool rock formations called “hoodoos”. Yes, that is the actual name of these weird spires that look like the wind carved them, but really they are mainly carved my water and ice. Even in this arid place that only gets 18 inches per year, the water has a major impact on erosion.

We learned that the rocks have all their cool colors of red, yellow, orange, and even a little green from the iron in the rocks which oxidizes to different states causing the different colors. The red is hematite and the yellow and orange are different oxidation states of iron. The green is actually caused by the reduction of the iron at the bottom of a lake or puddle. There are also purples and pinks caused by the manganese! And the whites and greys are different rocks, including dolomite.

We also found out how the hoodoos formed. They think the whole area of the Colorado Plateau uplifted gradually over a period of like 15 million years. This caused some cracking of the rocks of course, but the whole area is relatively flat (ie: Plateau). So, water gets in the cracks and seeps down and freezes (over 200 days of freeze-thaw here) and causes frost wedging. Frost wedging pushes the crack wider apart. Eventually the top layer of dolomite which is more resistant to weathering cracks open and falls in the spaces, crumbling down. The tops of the spires still remain covered with dolomite, but the sides aren’t and the erode faster when it rains, etc. So you end up with these wicked looking towers and even some “windows” and things that look like natural bridges. Anyway, this is way too simplified, but it will be enough to remind me when I re-read it and I can explain it better if you ask me.

Now I’ll stop talking about that boring science stuff and just mention that Brownie missed us and couldn’t wait to go pee when we returned to the campsite. I took the kids swimming in the pool, and enjoyed it myself also. It was over 90 degrees here. Rod did see a few deer today on the drive back, and that always makes him happy. We rented the kids these 4-wheeled bikes today and they had fun driving them around. Even Rod took a turn. And now it is 11 pm and I need to still go through the photos and upload all this stuff, so I’ll sign off for now.

Oh, and on the drive back we coasted downhill in 3rd gear for about 20 minutes of the drive, from 9910 feet to whatever the elevation of Cedar City is, I think 4500 or so… It was neat, and I really tried not to wear out the brakes too much! Even had to use 2nd gear for a while. Rod was glad to have a break from driving so he could look around more.