Bryce Canyon Trip Planner - Watch before visiting!

hey there thanks for tuning in if you're watching this video you're probably thinking about going to bryce canyon national park and let me tell you that's a good choice so in this video we want to give you all the planning essentials that you're going to need for your trip we just went to bryce canyon again this year we've been going to bryce canyon our our whole lives pretty much and uh so we want to give you all the resources that you need in one video so you're not having to bounce all over together we're matt and cheryl and our channel is we're in the rockies and our whole purpose is to make traveling easy for people we want you to come to the west and enjoy your trip whether you're in a city or a national park we are both educators matt has been teaching night classes at the local university and i've been a special education teacher for a long time and we love sharing our homeland with others we think that everyone should travel to the west but especially to bryce canyon also just to help you plan your trip to make things a little easier we have a website where in the rockies it has a lot of resources and a guide that's already prepared and an audio guide so check that out if you're interested but for right now grab your pen and pencil and let's get started talking about bryce okay so let's talk about why visit bryce canyon uh in short it's the most visually stunning canyon that we've seen it's actually part of a larger area that is a huge outdoor playground so there are so many things to do around bryce canyon so don't think of it as just bryce canyon but wow there's so much stunning beauty in southern utah all around bryce canyon that makes it worth it also there's activities like horseback riding and atving and biking it's a great family destination i think a lot of times bryce canyon will take a back seat to some of the neighboring national parks but i wanted to tell you a little story just to emphasize how stunning bryce canyon is when matt and i first got married almost 20 years ago we went on a family trip with the in-laws to the grand canyon which i had never been to before and after staring out in that vast canyon they said well what do you give it what do you rate it and i said well i give it an eight and it was a gasp of horror from everyone there how can you rate the grand canyon an eight and i said well because bryce canyon is a ten and it's my favorite and so even though the grand canyon is incredible i do reserve my my 10 for bryce canyon and actually it's kind of common for a lot of people to like bryce canyon as their favorite park their favorite national park in utah utah has five national parks a lot of people say it's their favorite okay so let's talk about what bryce canyon is famous for what is it uh well it's the largest collection of hoodoos in the world so hudu is basically just a rock jetting out of the ground kind of like a tower and these brice canyon are red rock towers all over the place and they're concentrated in what is called the bryce canyon amphitheater so it's called an amphitheater because it really does look like a semicircle it looks like you're sitting in the theater of a movie and it's rounded like that and they're tapered down and so what you're looking at there when you visit bryce you're standing on the edge of the canyon looking down into the amphitheater of these these hoodoos as i mentioned it's the smallest park of the five national parks in utah but really probably packs the biggest punch and again a lot of people in fact i looked it up online one time the the google ratings and zion in the grand canyon had a rating of 4.8 an average rating of 4.8 bryce 4.9 and it didn't surprise me actually so well and one of my very favorite things about bryce 2 is how accessible it is if you you know i love to hike and i think a lot of you that are visiting these parks are ready to do a little bit of hiking but if you're trying to do any sort of hiking at the grand canyon it is brutal you've got to be in pretty good shape to do some hiking of the grand canyon and same for a lot of the famous hikes at zion but hiking into the hudus i mean it can be a little challenging but i would say far easier the other thing that's nice about bryce is that it is higher elevation than zion in the grand canyon so if you're going in the summer months where you know most of us have to travel in the summer you get a nice reprieve from the heat at bryce canyon yeah the hikes are famous and really endlessly interesting and then finally is part of canyon countries so as i mentioned it's kind of close to zion canyon and the grand canyon uh in the whole area the whole region they call canyon country and just outside of right outside of bryce it's next to so many amazing formations and just some really stunning vistas so and matt correct me playing wrong but isn't thunder mountain railroad at disneyland themed after bryce canyon yes it is yes it is that's why i love that ride so much that's right it looks just like it um so it's just really remote rugged country i mean it is really out there southern utah is really out there and uh just just an amazing place now it's part of what's called the grand staircase the grand staircase is a geological formation that is like layers of red rock all through utah and arizona and bryce canyon actually sits at the very top of the grand staircase and then zion is next and the grand canyon is at the bottom of the grand staircase so the layers that you see between the parks are not the same layers but they're all part of the same formation called the grand staircase these parks are actually also connected tourism-wise so all three of them are very remote grand canyon zion and bryce are really remote particularly the north rim of the grand canyon and there were no roads or railroads or anything like that going through that area until about the early 1900s and so these parks didn't become national parks until then they were just so far out there nobody could really get to them but in an effort to get tourism to the area they made all three while they made zion bryce national parks grand canyon already was but they they included the north were in there and then they they linked them together with rhodes and that and even today when people travel there they still typically hit zion bryce in the grand canyon as a loop they call it the grand circle tour we've done guides for each of those parks but we're currently working on a guide that connects them all because it's not like there's nothing to see in between each of these parts yeah this really cool thing too oh i that's the incredible thing about utah i seriously was thinking about it today and how grateful i am to be a utahn and be live in the state where all these parks are because if they were if some of these places that are in between zion and bryce or anywhere else they would be national parks but you can't make the entire state of national park so some kind of hidden gems along that that route utah has five national parks there often called the mighty five and that's another road trip that people do is they'll hit all five utah national parks in one swoop so almost universally people visit bryce in conjunction with these other parks and that's because it's it's really remote um so they're usually hitting them all on a on a big road trip um so where applicable will give you suggestions for uh those for road trips if you're road tripping okay so i think that one of the challenges people come across when they visit bryce's well what do i do besides look at the hoodoos so we have a few ideas for you okay so obviously the first thing and probably the thing you must do is to actually look at those hoodoos and and i would recommend doing more than just looking at them from the room of the canyon but doing a hike into the hoodoos yeah you have to get into the canyon for sure to get the most out of it because it's just amazing that you can actually just hike down in there there's all these trails going through the hoodoos it's incredible um there's also something called the bryce canyon scenic drive so i didn't really make this clear earlier but bryce canyon is technically not a canyon it's a plateau and then it just falls off and so it's actually about 18 miles scenic drive and you're really driving along the edge of the plateau and so everything to the one side is just kind of falling off and there's hudus left behind and so there's a scenic drive that you can go on with with seven different overlooks and then seeing a sunrise over bryce canyon is one of the treasures one of the things you absolutely have to do even if you're not one who likes to get up early we definitely recommend seeing a sunrise over bryce canyon because it's more than just seeing the sunrise on the horizon it hits the hoodoos and casts shades on the wall and it's really pretty spectacular sunrise yes and i was just gonna say i after our road tripping this summer i got this blanket that just reminded me of the beautiful red rocks of of bryce canyon and zion and i just i love it it's stuff and it makes me think about those trips so sometimes the best souvenirs are not always the things you buy on your trip but things that remind you of it right outside of the park is bryce canyon city so this is just kind of a little tourism city that's set up right outside of the park to cater to the visitors but they have a rodeo and they have a dinner show a dinner music show country country music there's really a lot of family things to do there and then there's adventure and exploration so there's horseback rides you can actually do a horseback ride into bryce canyon which i highly recommend and you did that i did it did it this last year and it was fantastic it was amazing um you can also ride four-wheelers now you can't read them in bryce canyon national park but nearby you can ride there's tons of traffic miles and miles of atv trails in the area yeah famous famous rides biking run bikes or e-bikes that was like my that was my bucket list thing i had to do going to bryce this year is i whenever we would drive into the park i'd see this amazing bike trail heading into it and then i would notice in the canyon also the bike trail there so we ended up renting e-bikes and it was incredible we did 30 miles and we didn't even get all the way into the the canyon because we we went the other way to red canyon which is also an incredible spot right by bryce canyon you ought to check out but yeah the the bike trail is nicely paved just beautiful beautiful scenery so much fun yeah there's also mountain biking real famous mountain biking trails around there you can do helicopter tours over the canyon just like the grand canyon you could do helicopter tours over price um and then she mentioned cheryl mentioned red canyon which is nearby and then another formation or another national monument called grand staircase escalante national monument this is a much larger sprawling national monument but there's some specific activities that you can do there that are close to bryce that are amazing and there's one where we left off our list stargazing yes that's right thank you yes there are um the rangers do stargazing programs where you can go get your ticket in advance and they're not expensive what like a dollar yeah i think just for the reason you know they just want you to commit to coming yeah but but bryce canyon is one of the few dark sky areas where you can go out and see the stars and it's really incredible and they even did that throughout kovid they made their star party work and i i just wanted to give a thumbs up to those rangers and that incredible experience and if you're going and you like stars you ought to check it out too yep as i mentioned bryce canyon really in a remote area some of the best air quality and uh star um visibility at night you can see the milky way there's you do a google search you'll see all these images of the milky way from bryce canyon really cool and it does not cost a dollar it was free sorry yeah and don't worry bryce canyon is so small that it's not hard to find the visitor center i know you've got this yep only one only one only one visitor center there okay let's talk about how to get there so i mentioned it's really remote and so let me give you an idea here uh it's four hours away from las vegas so most people i believe would be flying into las vegas and doing this grand circle tour with zion and bryce in the grand canyon it's it's zion is about two hours away from las vegas and then bryce is another two hours so four hours away from las vegas four hours away from salt lake city if you fly into there four hours away from arches national park if you're doing that mighty five tour through utah i have talked to some people who somehow they got to arches and then they went down to las vegas but again four hours from there so it's also three hours from the grand canyon north rim and five hours from the grand canyon south rim so it's just out there along a long ways so but so worth the drive but we're the driving that's the great thing is that it's visited by fewer people because of that so you're you're ahead of the game if you're going out for sure and and our guide has an audio guide with it so we have some interesting stories for you to listen to while you're making the drive so definitely check that out okay so let's talk about where to stay when you visit bryce canyon first of all the prices are pretty reasonable there again it's not so touristy that they just jack it up so you'll be able to find a wide variety of accommodations there for you so we suggest staying in the park or near the park in bryce canyon city or right around there because of the sunrise actually we want to be able to wake up early and see the sun rise a lot of people will try to hit it they'll try to stay in between zion and bryce at a place like cedar city or maybe kanab utah and then they'll they'll just use that as their home base as a jumping off for both parks so that's doable we've written a whole blog post about how to do that that's doable but we'd probably say stay near the park if you can to get the most out of your experience and the thing with bryce too as madison is not super crowded and so if you're not right within the park it's not that big of a deal that i have not seen big lines of cars lined up for 30 minutes to get into the park no it's not like that at all and in fact no no no and then there's great accommodations immediately outside of the park i mean three minute drive from the park so so it's not like some of these other bigger parks where you're gonna have to drive an hour to even reach the gate and then drive into the park for a long time bryce canyon is small and and then just accommodations are right outside of the park so yes it is nice to stay inside the park and it is beautiful we've done both but staying outside the park not bad yeah not bad at all so inside the park there are only three places to stay there's the bryce canyon lodge which um is about 100 years old so some of these national park lodges they don't have a lot of accommodations it's more about the experience and the rustic feel so i don't think they're not big on ac and tv yeah or microwaves in a lot of cases but the advantage is you're staying right there by the canyon rim so you just wake up in the morning walk right out they have a restaurant and everything there too and then they have two campgrounds in the park just called the north and south campgrounds that's we've stayed there a couple of times and and they're great again they're just within walking distance of the canyon rim so so those are good and their national park campgrounds are always really affordable they're they're very inexpensive then i mentioned bryce canyon city sits right outside of the entrance to the park so how early can you get a reservation for the campgrounds do you know i don't know usually it's six months in advance but i don't know about that and i don't know that bryce would book up either or it probably books up but maybe not as far in advance as these other places yeah i would say if you're planning you know you're gonna go i'd say around that six month time frame get on the national parks website get your campground reservation just to make sure you can get that because i don't believe the bryce campgrounds are incredibly large like some of the other parts but they are they are nice places to camp um but uh right outside in bryce canyon city is some camping as well so the famous place to stay is ruby's inn ruby's inn is a resort so it's got hotel rooms it's got camping and rv sites and teepees and group tent sites it's got pools they do all these tours um these atv and horse ride back riding tours and helicopter tours like it's a full-fledged resort they really are ruby's zen is synonymous with bryce canyon because ruby reuben cerrett who's who established the the hotel set it up like the year became a national park and so has just been there since the very beginning so ruby's in is like the famous place to stay but there are plenty of other places in bryce canyon city and around there there's a little city that's right by bryce canyon city called tropic it's about 10 or 15 minutes away kind of a funny name tropics for for being in a couple of places there are stone canyon inn and happy trails bnb but again i'll put a link to our our resource for where to stay in our in the description here and then there's another cute little town about 30 minutes away from bryce and it's called panguitch and so i found this bnb there called the panguitch house which looks amazing and penguins really is this charming little town and they do a quilt walk and a balloon festival every every year every june i think and so uh a lot of people like say it penguins oh and in october they line the streets with scarecrows that's paragon um yep paraguan is another cute little town around there actually too um and then as i mentioned a lot of people will stay in cedar city or canap so that they can use that as a jumping off point for bryce or zion some people even stay in st george which is much closer to zion canyon but there's a bigger city and has more amenities okay that's enough on on where to stay so let's talk about where to eat um the general feeling here is that the food is pretty bad around bryce canyon it's not it's not for you foodies no no the one funny thing is there's one town in the middle of utah it's about maybe two hours away from bryce i think and it's called boulder utah and that is like a foodie town that is really it's been featured in the new york times new yorker stuff like that that is a foodie town i know i to think about i i don't recall ever eating a meal at a restaurant in bryce yeah we are usually camping and so we usually just cook our own meals um there are here are a couple of favorites though i'll give you if you're taking notes bryce canyon pines restaurant is a local favorite and then bryce canyon lodge does get good reviews as well so the lodge that's inside the park that is run by actually i'm not sure how it's run by i don't think it's run by zen tara but anyway that one did get gets good reviews and then there's a little place in tropic called idk bbq which sounds like i don't know barbecue but it's a popular place people like the barbecue there i wrote down on my notes here not to order fish so i i read a lot of reviews online where people complained about the fish that they ordered and i thought remember how he told you you're four hours away from any major city the fish is probably not what you want to order in this part of the country well and utah is just really not known for its seafood no no no the only body water water here we have is the great salt lake which has brine shrimp tells you well a lot of utahns hate fish that's because all we've ever tried is trout we're not we're not very cultured on the seafood but but i was thinking that maybe next time we go to bryce we should eat at some of these restaurants so we can give our opinion might be kind of fun of course um okay so we're actually back here okay let's talk about how to get around the park you actually do need to to know this it's we mentioned it's not huge it's a small park and it's not overly crowded but the parking lots will fill up around the amphitheater so you can drive into the park and anywhere you want in the park it's really simple there's just an amphitheater right there with parking right around it and then there's that scenic drive that's 18 miles and it goes to the end of the park and then you have to turn around and come back so there's only one entrance to the park i mean it's super simple but the parking lots will fill up around the amphitheater by around eight or nine in the morning so they do have a free shuttle that they've been running for over 20 years there and the shuttle is nice because it goes from bryce canyon city which is outside of the park into the park to the amphitheater it does not take you out on that 18 mile drive but that's really never crowded um so it just takes you right around the amphitheater and then into bryce canyon city so it's actually super easy all the parking is free in town and in the park you can just park in town and hop right on the shuttle and take it into the park if you want it runs about every 15 minutes and you do need to have your park entrance pass with you you know because you know an entrance to bryce is 35 for the week if you're hitting the surrounding parks just get the 80 year-long pass and then you don't need to worry about buying that pass every time you go to a new park but the shuttle i i think we always think about those shuttles that zion and what a nightmare those can be but it's a little bit different more crowded so different right zai and i would say stressful bryce nice yeah yeah and there's only one shuttle there's no connecting lines so like grand canyon has different connecting lines that you know you need to hop on and hop off bryce came super easy plus they have a little a little web page you can pull up on your phone and it'll show you when the next shuttle is coming it actually tracks all of them by gps so uh oh and then i mentioned you can park in bryce canyon city catch the shuttle in but if you don't do that you can pull you can drive into the park and there's a big parking lot there you can just park and catch the shuttle right there too but not at the visitor center there's a center that's actually across the street from the visitors center so don't visitor center they don't want you parking there all day just just for an hour or something like that yeah okay you want to talk about when to visit all right went to visit we were talking about this before we made the video and normally we have a recommendation but with bryce we don't anytime at any time people there's good and bad watchy it's all good that's the thing some of the parts we talk about there's things we don't like but it's all good i have zero that i don't that i things that bug me about bryce i have nothing to complain about um so we go in the summer usually because we have school-age children and the summer's great even though there are crowds they're manageable and and the temperature is nice one thing i do want to mention about the weather i want to talk about the weather at bryce for just a minute is because it's higher elevation it's mountain country it does rain it does rain in the summer in fact we got held on for a minute on our bike ride in june so plus the mornings are cold and the mornings are cold yes but that crisp mountain air that we love so much you get a little bit of that bryce but it does heat up during the day but other times people will say that they love to visit bryce canyon in february they love like the hoodoos are just strikingly beautiful with the snow on them so you might want to put some spikes on your shoes so you don't slip on the ice yeah but i mean you can still go hike in there and see the beautiful hoodoos so cheryl's parents went to last year i think and went during winter and just absolutely loved it so that's kind of on my bucket list to go visit winter but as cheryl mentioned we have kids school-aged kids so we're always going in the summer and of course fall and spring will be nice so yeah yeah it really doesn't get all that it doesn't get too hot in the summer either so but i would say though if you are trying to do that as part of a loop you'd want to consider what it's like at grand canyon zion the other parks you're going to because some of those places can get super hot and super crowded yes okay so let's talk about how many days to visit or how long you should visit the park for so you could actually just kind of drive into the park go up to the amphitheater take a look at the rim turn around go yeah you can spend like 30 minutes at the park if you actually wanted to i'd give that approach a thumbs down yeah you're missing a lot if that's all you do especially if you drive four hours out there i bring that up though because i think there are people that do that on their way from one place to another and they're just like let me go peek at it um and and that'll be stunning if you do that but you need to spend i would say at least a day there now the last time we went this year and usually when we go we'll go for like three days or something like that and we'll do some other activities um and kind of break up our our hikes and our sightseeing in the park with uh some other stuff going on but but uh as we mentioned there's just so much to do around there and you you really must get inside you have to hike down in there yeah so yeah i say i say two days that's my recommendation two days at bryce two days at bryce but i think that a lot of that includes doing some surrounding activities yes around like the grand staircase or red canyon or just an adventure yeah just some fun stuff so that's our suggestion there um okay there are six major hikes in the park so let me just briefly run through them with you in case you're kind of wondering what hike you should do technically the rim trail is a hike i guess so this is just again goes along the top of the canyon where you look down into the hoodoos and it goes for about five and a half miles i believe but you can just kind of walk as much of it as you want there's little shuttle stops all over so you can walk parts of it and catch the shuttle um and the room trail is nothing but poo poo like it's pretty yeah you actually want to do that yes you want to walk along the rim to because the the viewpoints looking down in are are different and just dramatic they're crazy oh yeah i mean when you see a picture of bryce those pictures are taken from the rim yeah i guess they just i didn't mean to poo poo but it's more like a walk not a hike right um and then the the most popular hike there is called the queen's garden slash navajo loop the name drives me crazy but it's actually a combination of two trails so the queen's garden is kind of a one-way trail going into the canyon and then it dead ends at the navajo loop so this is actually a loop um that gets back up to the rim but anyway that's why you'll hear that queen's garden and navajo loop trail and then that turtle actually does get a bit crowded oh yeah that one that's the most part it's very popular it's you know the it's on sand like packed sand there's a little bit of unpacked sand but it's mostly packed sand the trowels are i don't know maybe about as wide as this couch yeah plenty wide maybe wider yeah in certain spots yes and then you do you hike in you hike around through the hudas a little bit and you climb back out it's about three miles long yeah three miles three miles but okay it's most popular for a reason it really is to me the most most stunning hike there is and there's water and restrooms at the top of that hike so you don't like you can fill up there there's water spigots and restrooms so always always something on my mind i want to make sure that we are taken care of in that area there's a couple of famous formations on that one uh first is wall street which is these switchbacks where you go down into the canyon and then you'll see thor's hammer and then um queen victoria so that's why it's called the queen's garden trails named after this formation that they say looks like queen victoria but that one has just great variety it's really cool and then if but if you want to get away from the crowds a little bit try one of these other hikes so there's one called the peekaboo loop which is five about five miles long and that is also just going around the hoodoos down in the bottom of the canyon um not quite as much variety as the queen's garden trail actually but nothing to complain about that it was a fantastic hike so that was your favorite no no fairly maryland was my fave the next one is fairyland loop fairyland was my very favorite trail that we did at bryce canyon it's eight miles long we'd get up early in the morning i don't recall there being water stations and restrooms at the trail head of this hike and it's not a loop you come out a different spot right it's five miles in the canyon and three miles along the rim of the canyon to get back to your starting point yes and and i loved it because you know you hike in there and you're with the hoodoos but then you can see for a long ways where that trail is going and you just felt like you were on an adventure exploring a whole new area it was really really enjoyable i have to say that we we thought that that three mile rim trail was going to be easy and it wasn't it was it actually gets nothing oh it was a it was a butt kicker it would have been too bad that was at the end of five miles already yeah we were we were we were not sure if we should have tried to hike out to the road and catch the shuttle but we just followed our plan yeah so well actually that's one of the challenges of fairyland loop is the shuttle doesn't get it doesn't go to that point so uh anyway the ranger told me that was her favorite hike and that really does that has like the most wide open vistas and kind of makes kind of feels like you're in the old west really um okay then let's talk about two more real quick so at the very end of the bryce canyon scenic drive so you drive 18 miles out to this place called rainbow point and when you get there there is a little one mile loop called the bristlecone loop named after these bristlecone pine trees there there are these pine trees are about 2 000 years old they're some of the oldest organisms in north america uh so they're kind of actually there's these little scraggly trees they're they're they're kind of interesting little trees but bryce is known for the bristlecone pines and then the last one is called the mossy cave hike this is just a real like a half a mile hike maybe and it's not actually inside of bryce it's outside of the park well it's inside the park but it's not you have to drive out of the uh out of the park to get there really in a quirky little spot and um it gets pretty crowded during the day so you need to hit that earlier late typically because there's just a tiny parking lot there i mean it's like 10 cars tops it is not a big and they have a little outhouse there and it's it's not what you would think of as a mossy cave you go up and you see this mossy grotto i guess is more like it right describe the grotto most of us don't know what it is just a whole i don't know it's just an overhang it has a little bit of moss but that's not that that's not like the reason why you go to monsoon cave it's got a waterfall and that waterfall is interesting because it's actually was a ditch carved by the pioneers to get water from tropic reservoir which is up on top of the plateau down to the city tropic down below they actually carved this ditch to bring the water through this canyon so it's kind of crazy um so you know you can go play in the water there and hang out by the waterfall and that's a cool one it's a real favorite for families i would say if you have small children that's what you've got to do you know but once again i would not try going there in the middle of the day get up early or go there later in the evening and you'll get a parking spot okay let's talk about another activity here the horseback rides i already mentioned this but you can ride a horse into bryce canyon i mean how cool is that and it was one of my favorite things so there's only one company that takes you into bryce canyon and that is called canyon trail rides they also offer rides at zion canyon and at the north rim of the grand canyon and they are fantastic so we've used them at the north room the grand canyon cheryl did a mule ride there and then i used them at bryce canyon and they're awesome so i say that because if you're you know you'll see the advertisements for horseback rides at bryce canyon and they don't specifically say they don't go into bryce canyon right these other companies there's only one that goes into the canyon it doesn't mean the others are are not good though a lot of them go to some really pretty places as i mentioned there's tons of pretty places around bryce canyon and so there are some some great trails like um thunder mountain and red canyon are two of the places so ruby's in as i mentioned earlier they do horseback rides but there are other companies that go to other places as well so i've done a whole article on this as well that i'll link below but but again if you want to actually go into bryce canyon you gotta take that one company all right the next thing you can do is go for e-bike rides this was such a fun adventure that i you know we were planning our trip that was the one thing i really wanted to do and i'm so glad we did it uh there are miles of trails both inside and outside of the park and so we rented our bikes for half a day and i'm looking at where did we go to redken no what oh i think it was out of here e-bikes but i'm actually yes you're right we now there are other e-bike companies but we used out-of-here e-bikes just because that's the one i found and it worked really well now a couple things to know about e-bike rentals an e-bike is an electric bike which means it has a motor on it they're not difficult to ride but they can go pretty fast like up to 25 miles an hour they have they have pedal assist so it will just when you get to a hill it just kind of takes over and zooms you up the hill and there's even a throttle if you don't want to pedal so you just kind of push the power on if you're under 12 you're not allowed to not allowed to rent one so they have they have child seats and me and my sister-in-law laughed because we both had two children on the backs of our bikes we call them the semis because they were really big long bikes but we covered over 30 miles in one day and saw some incredible scenery we went to what to red rock canyon and saw all of that or not red rock district oh red cave yeah we went to red canyon and saw all of that and then we turned around passed out of here bikes and then went up and did some of bryce canyon actually went into the park for a little bit and i wish i could have seen more it was so neat to to see all that nature and ride a bike and then not have to do the exertion of pedaling yourself all of that time there's no way i could have ridden a bike for 30 miles that with two kids on it that many times was just a party it's just fun just cruise around so as i mentioned they do they do mountain bikes and e-bikes um so i've got another article on that actually if you want to check that out yeah lots of options around there and we really do believe that when you're doing a sightseeing place like bryce it is good to throw an activity or two in there especially if you have younger children or if you're staying for more than a day because as incredible as bryce canyon is it yeah i think you could maybe lose a little bit of appreciation if you spent the entire day looking over overlooks but but when you add in a little bit of adventure it really makes the trip memorable and fun yeah we always like to get variety in our trips and keep our kids uh moving okay and then finally you can rent atvs four-wheelers um you can't ride these into the park again but there are trails all over the place there are four companies nearby that rent these atvs so ruby's in as i mentioned kind of the mainstay there at bryce canyon but there are others that rent atvs and we actually didn't rent one because we brought our own my dad brought his so we but we did cruise around on the trails and there are beautiful places nearby one of the real popular places is called castle canyon but like a lot of these atv companies they'll give you guided tours so if you're not really comfortable or you don't want to get lost or whatever you can take a guided tour this is typically where you kind of ride in a line you know behind each other or there are some where you can just rent them and head off into the trails on your own and go exploring so and they'll give you a pretty good map at ruby's inn the room is in there's trails all around ruby's end they'll give you maps there but then there are trails over in other places as well i was going to say too that they have the traditional four-wheelers where you straddle the seat ride it and then they have these what are called side-by-sides they are like polaris rangers or razors something like that where it's more like a mini jeep that you're driving around or you're sitting side by side some of those will carry four people as well they'll have a back seat so there's lots of options for you um i want to say they typically cost around they were pricey i think they were four hundred dollars a day around that so one of them was 400 bucks for half a day but if you had four people that would make it a hundred dollars a person for that would all be able to ride in one so i think that cost typically came out to about a hundred dollars a person depending on the company that you went with right so next we have what to pack for your trip all right so as we mentioned the temperature can change quite a bit between morning and evening so dress in layers definitely just for sure so i have a jacket i have a t-shirt you know i i always feel like just a pair of pants not jeans i don't like to hike in jeans but your stretchy pants or your hiking pants um those are those will be good okay we always say running shoes no need to wear boots for hiking this these are just easy you know easy walking trails um with again kind of flat terrain yeah fly train pretty packs in so running shoes are great and not muddy no no the climate is high and dry so if you're not from around here you'll you'll probably dry out um when you come to southern utah northern arizona so bring some lotion and chapstick and moisturizer yeah sunscreen yeah definitely you know one thing you don't really need i hope i'm not wrong but i've never experienced mosquitoes at bryce canyon yeah yeah we we didn't i i it scares me to tell you to not bring mosquito repellent because i don't want to be wrong but i've never seen a mosquito there yeah that's a good point i never really thought about it at bryce or zion have we no i'm not sure about the grand i don't remember the grand canyon but um yeah yeah maybe that's not much of an issue cheryl mentioned bringing a poncho for rain gear and uh some people have difficulty breathing at high altitudes like this so just something to kind of keep or be aware of maybe that when you get you know they talk about these these sports teams when they come to the rockies to play like in denver you know they're they're high altitude and they run out of breath easier so um just something to think about there or altitude sickness sometimes people get that okay and then finally we mentioned that it's a long ways away from anything there so you'd want to bring like an audio book or something to listen to to pass the time as you go there so that's one reason why we have made an audio guide for you so i like to tell stories about these places i like to research them find the best stories and tell them to people and so we have made an audio guide for bryce canyon and also it goes along with our itinerary for bryce canyon national park so think of this just like a self-guided tour like we're giving you a tour of bryce canyon what you can do with this itinerary here is it will tell you exactly where to go and when and we'll walk you through each day what you'll be doing and so let me just kind of give you an example here is um for example this page will show you how to hike the queen's garden navajo loop trail and what to look out for the different formations and how to find them and tell you all the things you need to know about hiking that trail and then the next page will instruct you to go where to go to to listen to a ranger talk or to get lunch or like the next step on your activity that day what you would be doing um for example this page gives you information about the scenic drive and tells you what the best overlooks are and kind of how to do the scenic drive and what to look out for so this guy that that i've prepared is a multi-day bryce canyon guide this is how to get the most out of bryce canyon there's a section on here about grand staircase escalante national monument that i mentioned and this is a drive um these are things that you would see along your drive here things to look out for things to stop at and so we're real specific about um where to stop so at mile marker 68 you're going to stop here and you're going to look at this overlook and so we are basically trying to hold your hand and walk you through the whole process to get the most out of bryce canyon national park yes this isn't a travel book where you have to read through and piece together this is just saying hey you're gonna get up at this time you're gonna drive here here's a map here's where you park here's what you're gonna see it just it just takes all the stress out of planning your trip i really hope you get it because then you can spend more time having fun and less time planning that's always a big stressor for me when i go on a trip is worrying about oh just all the little details knowing how far apart things are and and in our guide we've solved that for you so you just follow the instructions and you'll have a great trip plus matt's stories are the most entertaining ever that doesn't bryce have a bunch of butch cassidy stuff yes so if you like cassidy and the wild bunch yeah yeah he did the audio tour as he came through this area actually um and so that's the other thing is while you're driving from from one point to the next uh you'll listen to a chapter of my audio guide now the chapters in the audio guide are typically around 15 minutes long so they're not just kind of like a real brief you know tidbit they're more like a story you know it's long enough to kind of get into a story and get out of it um and so think of it like we are you're you you're hiring us to be your private tour guide around in your vehicle only much much cheaper than hiring a private tour guide but you're getting pretty much the same experience there but either way we are so grateful that you've watched our video and we do want you to have an amazing trip feel free to check out our other videos on bryce to help prepare you also check out our website wherein the rockies.com it has articles about planning your trip we would sure appreciate a like if you found this video helpful to help spread this to other people that are planning their trip we just feel that everyone should get to travel to the west and see how beautiful it is we appreciate you for staying with us learning about bryce and we hope to see you in the parks take care

Channel: We're in the Rockies

Views: 31,499

Keywords: Bryce Canyon national park, how to visit Bryce canyon, things to do at Bryce canyon, where to stay Bryce canyon, where to eat Bryce canyon, planning a trip to Bryce canyon, horseback rides in bryce canyon, hoodoos, ruby inn, navajo loop trail

Id: a_-E8uTNAQ0

Length: 44min 56sec (2696 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022