Bryce Canyon to Price City, Utah

I think I am becoming boring, when I say that this has been yet another day of incredible driving across the most beautiful and impressive American scenery.

After breakfast, we all walked to the Bryce Canyon rim to look down into the canyon with its amazing hoodoos. Hoodoo is the name given to the towering spires by the indigenous Indians. The spires, many with incredible stones precariously perched at the very top, come in all shapes and sizes. Some, like these, look like a row of weathered statues.

Some photos I took of Bryce Canyon, including the huge Natural Bridge.

 

 

We then drove about seventeen miles to the very end of the park road to see one of the rare groves of Bristlecone Pines. The Bristlecone holds the record for being the greatest age of any living organism on Earth, with some trees over 4,500 years old. They survive in the very harshest of climates and, here in Bryce Canyon, they live on the very edge of a windswept ledge at over 9,000 feet. They grow extremely slowly and I wonder how old the young tree is, that Wendy is standing by.

Many of the trees look half dead with only part of the tree alive. They are very strange trees indeed. Here are a couple of dead trees with a young tree in the foreground.

The grove of Bristlecones perched on the very edge of the canyon cliffs.

Now for the incredible driving - we left Bryce Canyon at about noon and took Highway 12, which runs to the north of the canyon. Highway 12 is definitely one of my top drives in the world. You go from one amazing view to another with almost every turn of the road.

The variety of the rock formations is stunning. Here was a formation that looked like the skin of an elephant, or that's the way it seemed to me!

I have no idea how this hollow has been formed. It was just there!

What created these two circular formations is a mystery to me.

Wendy walking back to the car after taking photos of the wonderful views across the Utah landscape.

More wonderful colours.

Looking down on to the gorge cut by the Escalante River, with the vivid green of the trees in the gorge making such a contrast to the bleak rock.

The final stretch of our drive along Highway 12 took us to the highest point of the drive so far, at 9,600ft.

We then took minor roads towards our overnight stay in Price City, chosen because it is a short drive from there to Salt Lake City, our next stop of the tour.

Here we are having a short break before we drove the final 70 miles of the day.

We have now driven over 1,300 miles in four days, so tomorrow's short drive of about 100 miles will be very welcome.