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Orange Glow
Driving into Bryce Canyon National Park on the morning of my 65th birthday, we spied these hoodoos glowing in the sunrise light. At this hour, they say you can’t take a bad photo at Bryce!
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Orange Sky
The same bright colors seen in the earth of southern Utah can also be found in its sky on a fall evening.
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Hoodoos
The distinctive geological feature of Bryce Canyon is the thousands of bright pink and white vertical “hoodoo” spires. These are ones on the east side of the park near the waterfall.
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Waterfall
Our first hike in Bryce Canyon was near our campground east of the park. This waterfall was created by Mormon pioneers who dug a several-mile long ditch to bring water to the Tropic valley in the 1890s.
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Orange Red
The cliffs just north of Torrey turn bright orange red in the sunset light.
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The Castle
The Castle rocks near the Capitol Reef National Park’s visitor center stand atop layer after layer of sedimentary rocks of various shades and ages.
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Fruita Schoolhouse
The original schoolhouse in the village of Fruita in Capitol Reef NP isn’t as close to the rocks that have fallen off the mountain above as it looks in this photo. But it isn’t that far away from them either.
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Between Two Slabs
Hiking back out of the Grand Wash in Capitol Reef National Park, I found two large slabs of rock that had fallen off the cliffs above and framed this view of the canyon terrain between them.
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Narrows
The Narrows in the Grand Wash of Capitol Reef NP have to rise hundreds of feet straight up to reach the afternoon light.
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Black on Pink
Dark weathering stripes on the Narrows cliffs even continue along the undersides of breaks in the vertical walls of the Grand Wash.
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Stripes
With all of the horizontal stripes of rock around Capitol Reef, you can also find vertical stripes of weathering where water has dripped down the cliffs in Grand Wash.
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Vertical Panorama
What does the Narrows in the Grand Wash look like if you try to look from the path up to the sky and back down to the ground behind you? It looks like this! (Try turning the image upside down to see what I mean.)
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Rock Climber
This quick grey squirrel bounded across my path and up the boulders on the other side in Grand Wash.
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Grand Wash
A hike on the eastern side of Capitol Reef National Park up a dry “wash” leads into a Narrows between cliffs towering hundreds of feet overhead.
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Triangular Window
A different perspective on sunset in Capitol Reed NP was looking through this gap in the rocks.
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Lookout
The best view of sunset in Capitol Reef NP may be from the red rock outcropping that these hikers climbed. I can’t be sure, since we stayed safely back on the main trail and just included their lookout in this image.
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Intense
The cliffs in Capitol Reef NP reflect sunset light with a remarkable intensity!
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Sunset Point
The evening light from Sunset Point in Capitol Reef National Park makes the colorful cliffs look like over-exposed images. But they really are this bright!
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Torrey Campground
Seldom will you find a campground with a scenic background like Thousand Lakes RV Park in Torrey, Utah.
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Pointing Up
This dramatic pier of dark rock in the Courthouse Towers area of Arches NP combines one of the most impressive towers in the park with one of the smaller window arches.
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Park Avenue
At the top of the hill as you enter Arches National Park, this valley appears on the left as two rows of dark red skyscrapers. Welcome to Park Avenue We
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Vertical
Three towers of various shapes rise above the valley called Park Avenue near the entrance to Arches National Park.
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What Is It
Here’s a colorful set of towers showing off plenty of layers of rock. What does it look like to you?
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Dead Tree
On the hike to Landscape Arch, we passed this dead tree in front of colorful cliffs.
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Landscape Arch
This long, narrow arch lost a big chunk of its underside in the 1990s, making it even more dramatic of a leap across the hillside in Arches NP.
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