Bryce Canyon National Park is a National Park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m) above sea level.

The Bryce Canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1874. The area around Bryce Canyon became a National Monument in 1923 and was designated as a National Park in 1928. The park covers 35,835 acres and receives relatively few visitors compared to Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon, largely due to its remote location. That is too bad, as it is an amazing place to visit. It is almost like another world, especially when you walk amongst the hoodoos along one of the many trails that descend from the rim.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, at 1.7 million acres, dominates any map of southern Utah. It is unique in that it is the first monument to be administered by the Bureau of Land Management, rather than the National Park Service. The monument is a geologic sampler, with a huge variety of formations, features, and world-class paleontological sites. The Grand Staircase is a geological formation spanning eons of time and is a territory of multicolored cliffs, plateaus, mesas, buttes, pinnacles, and canyons.

I visited Bryce Canyon, passing through portions of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Park and nearby Red Canyon via Highway 12 in 2013 and 2014. This gallery highlights pictures that were captured on both visits.