Capitol Reef & Bryce Canyon NP

We woke up to a beautiful morning sky view out of the back of Ruedi. It was a pleasant temperature so I even prepared some coffee. The loop road was pretty short and we stopped at all viewpoints and did three short walks. The last natural bridge is impressively spanned across the canyon 🌉
Next on our toady's agenda was the Capitol Reef National Park, the least visited of Utah's big five. But before we got there we were stunned by the beautiful scenic drive! Massive canyon formations as far as the eyes could see. The scenery was just breathtaking and it kept going (except for some plains) like this for more than two hours...

The Capitol Reef National Park is not that big but has some unique features, like the fruit orchards and the beautiful canyon drive. It also offers some hikes but it was pretty hot and we wanted to reach our final stop for the day, the Bryce Canyon National Park. Similar to the Canyonlands it's on top of a plateau and has a parkway leading to the viewpoints and hikes.
Once again we were surprised on the way there, first there was a sudden elevation change up to 2920 m (from 1400) on top of Mt Boulder and a beautiful overlook to Capitol Reef. Afterwards the street took us back down and into winding sharp turns within the canyons and narrow passages on top of ridges.
At a turnout I spotted another Swiss license plate and we stopped for a quick exchange about each others travels and vans (they're having Ruedis bigger brother, Mellow).

We reached the Bryce Canyon National Park with plenty of time left to do a little walk, check out some viewpoints and then see the sun set over the Hoodoos. And it was a magical experience seeing these unique features light up ember by the last sunrays. From the Sunset Point we took a little trail on switchbacks down to see the Hoodoos close up.

Afterwards we drove a little while longer until we got a flat tire again almost near the stop for the night. So we changed it to the spare tire again and we will check if it can be fixed the next days. Czytaj więcej