We rented a cabin between Bryce and Zion for a couple of days, and on our first day there we decided to visit Bryce Canyon National Park. I hadn’t fully recovered yet from my cold, but thankfully this turned out to be a cloudy – and almost cool – day, which was perfect for me. It was quite busy in the national park, the car park near the visitor centre was so full we had to skip it. We decided to hike the Navajo / Queen’s Garden trail loop, which goes from Sunset Point to Sunrise Point. I was a bit worried the hiking up and down the canyon would be tough, but it was surprisingly gentle – partly because the trail is gentle and partly because it wasn’t very warm that day.

I really loved Bryce Canyon, I think it was my favourite national park, even if it was busier than most other parks. The so-called “hoodoos” (the colourful rock spires that the park is famous for) are just fantastic!

It was the cloudiest day of our trip, but we still saw some blue sky as well…

And even though the skies were threatening at times, we didn’t get rained on!

The light kept changing, which made the rock appear different as well. Endlessly fascinating

After our hike, we drove further into the park. Along the road, we stopped at the viewpoint for Natural Bridge…

At the end of the road (Rainbow Point) we followed the short Bristlecone Loop Trail, less spectacular (no hoodoos here), but with fantastic views.

And fantastic clouds, a paradise for a meteorologist

On our way back, we stopped at Bryce Point around sunset. Bryce Point looks out over the whole amphitheater, a really impressive view! There were many showers in the distance, which made the sky look dramatic, and we took a few panorama shots…

We were very lucky that day, with all the showers surrounding us, we didn’t get a drop of rain. But as soon as we drove out of the National Park, we were hit by a strong thunderstorm

We had a great day in Bryce Canyon, even though we didn’t venture far off the beaten track. There are some nice long distance paths under the rim, that would be great to explore if we ever visit again.

Highway 12 is called a Scenic Byway, and runs from Capitol Reef to Bryce Canyon National Park. We were planning to camp somewhere along the way after leaving Cathedral Valley. The road is claimed to be one of the most beautiful roads in the USA, and it’s clear to see why… the views are fantastic and the landscape changes a lot along the way.

The autumn colours were fantastic, a lot of the birch trees were a bright yellow colour.

We stopped at nearly every viewpoint along the way and took LOTS of pictures

The forest was so pretty…

Later on, the road goes over a narrow ridge, with steep drops to both sides. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture of that, but it was impressive. The landscape turned more desert-like again, and we saw a canyon from above.

Paul had been battling a cold for a couple of days now, and was tired after camping for the last 2 days. When I also started getting a cold, we decided we needed some more luxury that night, and we found a motel in Escalante. It turned out to be a very friendly town – full of outdoor shops, book shops and nice cafes – perfect!

The next day I wasn’t feeling well but Paul was lots better, so we decided he would hike to Calf Creek Falls, while I stayed in the shady picknick place next to the parking lot, reading a book.

Here are the photos Paul took of the waterfall… looks really nice, I think on a healthier day I would have liked to swim in the lake underneath

Later that day we drove to the cabin we rented, between Bryce Canyon and Zion. Ready for more adventures

After leaving Goblin Valley, we drove for about 2 hours, to Capitol Reef National Park. This is not such a well-known park, and it seems quite off the beaten track for some reason. This has its advantages, Capitol Reef is a lot more relaxed about permits and camping inside the park. In addition, we chose to visit an area called Cathedral Valley which is rarely visited, so we had a very solitary experience in this park. We stopped at the visitor centre for information and a backcountry permit, which they almost didn’t want to give us. You only need it for camping outside of the designated campgrounds, and they said we could camp outside the boundaries of the park without any permit – I think they were a bit lazy and didn’t want to deal with the paperwork Eventually, we got the permit and were ready to go.

We first had to cross a river which was quite an adventure – but the car handled it without any problems. The dirt road was a bit tiring to drive, but the landscape was beautiful and we made lots of stops, for example at this well with an abandoned truck…

Soon we came to the Bentonite Hills, with very impressive colours… in the last photo you can see a good example of cryptobiotic soil, which is a crusty soil that is “alive” as it’s made of bacteria/fungi/algae/lichens etc. Everywhere in Utah, there were warnings about this soil, as one footstep can take a hundred years to recover from the damage. I called it macrobiotic soil for the entire trip, as I could never remember the real name we made lots of jokes about it, but we did try to stay off it as much as possible.

And although we were driving through a desert landscape, we still found lots of flowers – including the impressive Desert Paintbrush

We kept climbing, and suddenly we had this view right from the road… impressive!

Shortly afterwards, we took a turn towards a viewpoint over Cathedral Valley. We were getting a bit carsick, so we left the car next to the road and walked the last bit to the viewpoint. There was a parking place and some picknick tables there, and for the first time we saw other cars (and people!). They must have been a bit surprised to see us arrive on foot We got our first view over Cathedral Valley from here, and it was just SPECTACULAR… You look down on a green valley with several monoliths, it was so beautiful!

After the viewpoint, the road went steeply down to the valley floor. We talked to several rangers at the visitor centre, and one of them had said the road was impassible in this area. We had a suspicion she was just trying to discourage us from going there, but we were a bit nervous here – around every bend and especially river crossing we thought the road might become impassible. And although the road was a bit tough at times, with soft sand and several river crossings, some of which actually had water in them – there really was no problem at all. It was getting quite late, so we drove on to our destination: the Temples of the Sun and Moon. Actually it was after seeing photos of these “temples” that I decided we needed to visit Cathedral Valley And it was so worth the long journey, they are so impressive…

We took LOTS of photos, we arrived just before sunset so the light was soft and beautiful. We set up camp a little distance away from the Temple of the Moon.

We were all alone here, and far from anywhere – it was truly special. The night sky was incredible as well, this far from any light pollution. There were a lot of planes flying over though!

The next morning, I got up before sunrise and walked to the Temple of the Sun. It was so beautiful to watch the desert wake up, to see the colours change, to see a big red sun rising and to watch the changing light on the rocks. Magical!

Meanwhile, Paul took these photos of the Temple of the Moon…

In the morning there were lots of animal tracks in the sand. I was also amazed by all the plants that manage to live in the desert.

After a beautiful sunrise, we took out tent down and made breakfast. We had to drive back the way we came, as the road became impassible just past the Temples. At least, according to the rangers at the Visitor Centre but this time we decided not to risk it. We stopped at the Gypsum Sinkhole, which formed after the collapse of something called a Gypsum Plug – a hill formed out of crystallized gypsum carried in groundwater. The hole is 15 m wide and 60 m deep – impressive! We also stopped at the monoliths for another view – they are so pretty.

We took a short side trip to Morrell cabin (also known as Les’s cabin), it was used by cowboys passing through the valley with cattle between 1930 and 1970. Beautiful and remote place, you feel like you’re stepping back in time, and wonder what it would have been like here back then…

After driving the steep road up, we turned away from the road we travelled yesterday, and instead took the Thousand Lake Mountain Road. Here you exit the National Park, and enter the National Forest Area – we were joking about that there surely weren’t going to be trees in the desert, but look here… These sudden changes in the landscape are very impressive!

Cathedral Valley was one of the highlights of our trip, and if we’d ever come back to Utah, I think we’d spend more time in Capitol Reef. We never even got to see the Waterpocket Fold that the park is famous for – but I think Cathedral Valley is a real gem that you shouldn’t miss out on

After our hike in Little Wild Horse Canyon, we hurried to nearby Goblin Valley State Park. I found out about it by coincidence, and after seeing some fantastic photos of the park I was determined to add it to our itinerary We got there just before sunset, the perfect time to walk around between the goblins. State parks are less strict than National Parks, and here you could walk wherever you wanted. You could even climb the goblins, though of course they didn’t recommend it – they can collapse quite easily and the nearest hospital is a LONG way away.

The goblins are officially called hoodoos and are formed by weathering sandstone. The result is an endlessly fascinating landscape, I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland wondering around some otherworldly landscape.

Goblin Valley is remote, there are no villages or towns anywhere near. Around sunset, there was only a handfull of people wandering around, and in the end we even had the place to ourselves.

The sunset was painting the goblins a deep orange, so pretty!

There are a few nearly-dry creeks in the valley, some of them had beautifully cracked soil. We also found lots of these mini ant hills.

Here you can see one of the creeks, supporting a few flowering bushes.

We spent the night in a yurt at the Goblin Valley campground, which was a fantastic experience! There are two at the campground, and ours was separated from the rest of the campground by a high mountain wall. We felt completely alone there, but we had electricity, water, and a toilet nearby – luxury camping The stars were really amazing, we tried to take a startrail photo with our yurt in it. We didn’t know that you can’t just take such long exposures (more than 15 minutes) with a digital camera – the sensor will overheat resulting in hot pixels with strange colors. So the image below isn’t exactly noise free, but still, you get the idea… The last photo shows our yurt just after sunrise, so beautiful!

I wish we could have stayed a couple more nights at the yurt, but it was only available for one night, and we were moving on to Capitol Reef the next day.