June 21-22, 2026
Bryce Canyon is famous for “hoodoos,” oddly-formed rock columns with variegated coloring. It’s also one of the 24 national parks that have official park lodging, besides campgrounds, on their property. We’ve been to a few of them: I remember making dinner with my instant pot at the Chisos Mountain Lodge in Big Bend, a cozy Shabbat at Canyon Lodge in Yellowstone, panicking about a mouse in our cabin at Colter Bay in Grand Teton, picnicking at Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic, taking a boat tour from Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier, and swatting flies as we walked into Kettle Falls Hotel in Voyageurs. Great memories! It really adds to the park experience to stay onsite, so when we planned our Utah trip (a very long time ago), we were delighted to reserve two rooms at the Bryce Canyon Lodge. A family of eight fits neatly into two double-queen rooms.
This is why park trips are so meaningful to us – many times they start as a dream, booking rooms and making plans for months or years down the road, hoping and praying we’ll be able to make it there when the time comes. Entering a park is the culmination of meticulous work and careful forethought, yet another step towards our goal of visiting all of America’s national parks.
We arrived on a sunny morning in June to find the park buzzing with activity. We finally found a parking spot and packed up our backpacks for a hike down into the canyon. A sidewalk from the parking lot took us right out to the canyon edge for a breathtaking view! Nothing quite compares to the Grand Canyon but Bryce Canyon is absolutely stunning. We were amazed by the intricacy of the hoodoos. “It looks like an army of terracotta warriors,” my son said reverently.
We started out along the rim on the Queen’s Garden trail, probably the most popular trail in the park. Queen’s Garden connects to the Navajo Loop, a pleasant hike down into the canyon and then a steep climb back up. The park rangers have hidden gold medallions along the trail, and finding three of them (or two, plus a three mile hike) earns you a very official park sticker! The first medallion we found was at the Queen Victoria Hoodoo – a famous rock formation named because it looks like a profile of the queen. I’m sure the resemblance was strong years ago when they named it, but hoodoos are constantly changing as the wind blows, so it’s a little harder to see now.
This was the inaugural hike of Greg’s GoPro, a recent Father’s Day gift. We’ve never done a lot of fancy video work in parks before, usually just a few clips with our iPhones, but it was fun to try something new.
Sophia wrote about this hike for our family newspaper, the Good Times Gazette (subscriptions are free to anyone wanting to keep up with the extended Squicciarini family):
If any of you have read The ‘Chronicles of Narnia‘ by C.S. Lewis, then picture how it would look if massive people were turned to stone... these are the hoodoos! Green shrubs were growing in the valley below, but all over the slanted sides of the canyon, there were huge hoodoos. Some hoodoos were carved out in the middle, making tunnels to walk through. That was Claire’s favorite part! “Papa, look, ‘nother one tunnel!” we heard many times. The hoodoos have distinctive coloring. It’s not just one color, but stripes. The bottoms are a darker orange, the middle is white, and the tops are lighter orange.
After going down through the hoodoos, there were more and more signs that said, “Danger, narrow ahead.” It was narrow alright! The last mile of the hike was through a cave so narrow you could touch the walls on either side. The cave was very dark and then it opened up and we were out. I happened to look up and I saw people climbing up the side. “Is that our trail?” I wondered. Yes it was. That was the steepest mile of my life. We had descended down into the canyon so of course we had to climb back up. With aching legs and pounding hearts, we reached the top. High fives were given, pictures were taken, and a well-earned picnic lunch was eaten. It was the most unusual, different, magical, steep hike I have ever done.
“For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” Psalm 95:3-6
After a windy picnic lunch at the Bryce Canyon General Store, we drove the park road, a scenic drive that takes you from the visitor center all the way out to Rainbow Point, passing the Bryce Natural Bridge and Farview Point. We returned to the visitor center to collect our sticker prizes and see a film about the park. Fun facts: 1) Bryce Canyon is technically an amphitheater NOT a canyon, and 2) the park is named after Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon pioneer – I’d venture to say it is the only national park named after a Mormon pioneer!
We checked into our rooms, which were clean, comfortable, and a little overpriced; the advantage of a park lodge is easy access to trails, no long lines at the gate, and beautiful sunrise/sunset views. We strolled over to the Rim Trail and looked around Sunset Point.
We made a trek back to the rim with art supplies and sketch pads just before sunset. Despite the crowds we saw earlier on the trails, we had the rim mostly to ourselves after dinner.
We are good at filling our days to the brim with activities, but taking time to sit and immerse ourselves in God’s creation is a habit we’re developing as a family. I love this picture of the two of us (above) because it reminds me of a rare quiet moment during a whirlwind 8-day park trip.
Greg got up at little after midnight and walked outside to see the stars. Bryce Canyon is an International Dark Sky park with incredible opportunities for stargazing! He and I set our alarms early the next morning and crept out of our rooms before the berries were awake. It was chilly – quite a difference from Arches earlier in the week! We perched on the edge of the rim, bundled up in our jackets, as the sun began to fill the sky with pink and orange streaks.
The classic Bryce Canyon activity is to ride a horse (or mule) down into the canyon. Originally we booked a trail ride for the four older kids and me, but I pulled Eva out at the last minute because she’s a little timid about heights, and when we saw how steeply the trail went down, plus how fearlessly the horses meandered toward the the cliff edge, I realized it wasn’t a good fit for her. This turned out to be an excellent decision. After a cup of decaf coffee at, oddly, the Valhalla Pizzeria, we made our way to the corral to meet our horses: Antelope, Joe, Stumpy, and Rusty.
These red sandy hills made me think of Egypt! I’ll never forget the experience of riding through the canyon, feeling far away from civilization, the heat of the sun on our faces, silence only broken by the gentle sound of harnesses and hooves.
A note from Zoe’s article titled “Astride the Saddle:”
I liked how our guide would stop the horses and explain some history about Bryce Canyon. She told us about a particular type of tree that smells just like butterscotch and vanilla. I was dumbfounded! How could tree bark smell so good? She also explained how the hoodoos we’d been passing were constantly changing. The wind and rain chip away at the rock and carve different designs. That was cool! The scenery was so amazing that I could hardly focus on my horse!
Meanwhile, Greg rented bikes with Eva, Rachel, and Claire at the Historic Service Station (a vintage gas station). With Claire tucked into a bike trailer, they rode through a spruce-fir forest to enjoy the views at Lower Inspiration Point.
We had one more peek at the hoodoos at nearby Cedar Breaks National Monument – kind of a mini Bryce. Cedar Breaks is the epicenter of Grand Staircase-Escalante, over 10,000 feet high. It doesn’t have any cedar trees, ironically, but plenty of beautiful bristlecone pines. We drove a short stretch of Utah’s Scenic Byway 12, an “All-American Road” with eye-catching views of the multiple rock layers that make up Grand Staircase, before turning off toward Cedar Breaks, and from there on to Zion.
I really loved Bryce Canyon (spoiler, even more than Zion). We had such a great experience – staying at the lodge, horseback riding, hiking… it was all so good.
=)
