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We had an eventful Day 2 so I’m splitting it up into 2 parts.

We woke up at around 9am (which is late) and to our dismay, everything was snow covered outside and it felt like Canadian weather again. Many of us were definitely unprepared for the cold weather, including myself (I didn’t have room to pack a winter jacket, and for some strange reason I brought a scarf but not a hat or gloves :S). We stopped by a nearby Subway for breakfast, and conveniently they also have free wi-fi. After grabbing a bite, we went to the Bryce Canyon National Park Visitor Center. The ranger told us the snowstorm didn’t hit very hard last night so the roads are pretty clear, and as the sun goes up most of the snow on the roads should melt.

Bryce Canyon is famous for its hoodoos (the spire shaped rock formations) – hoodoos are most abundant in the world in Bryce Canyon National Park. We followed the ranger’s recommendations and visited Bryce Point first while we still have morning light. The view was, once again, amazing – I had time to stitch some panos 🙂 Unfortunately the downside is it was freezing cold, with wind chill at around 15 mph I think (here I go with Imperial again). The good part is most of the viewpoints at Bryce Canyon were “drive by” viewpoints – you basically drive up to the spot and there’s almost no hiking necessary to get to the lookout points. We visited a handful of viewpoints including:

Here’s what hoodoos look like:

Another shot of hoodoos. Note the snow – it was quite cold!

Shots like these show why Bryce Canyon National Park has the most hoodoos in the world.

Hoodoos against a mountain. Me looking.

An interesting natural “castle” like structure. Notice the cave.

Full shot of this natural castle.

Another side of the castle with funny walls sticking out.

Natural hole in the wall. (think they called it Natural Bridge – no it is not accessible)

And some pano shots! From Bryce Point:

Pano from inspiration point:

And as an interesting exercise, here are 2 pano shots from nearly the same place, one at 20mm FF and one at 24mm x1.6 crop.

So by noon or so, we’re done with all the drive-by viewpoints. At this point we could opt to take a hike in Bryce Canyon, or the more crazy idea floated around is to take a detour to visit Arches National Park, which is a detour of 4 hours one way – and we opted for this detour. So we quickly went back to the Subway to grab a foot long sub to go for lunch, and then hopped into the car for a 4 hour drive North-East into Utah for Arches National Park (which was close to Colorado, almost making this a 4 state trip)…

(to be continued!)