Sunday, April 20--The Drive to Bryce Canyon

Sunday morning we drove the CRV to Bryce Canyon. We traveled through Dixie National Forest. The drive was along Utah 12. We left the rv at Capitol Reef.
We reached the summit, but knew that we would be about the same in Bryce Canyon.
Along the way we had many great views. The most interesting was Hog's Back Ridge. You drive along the road with no guardrails and a view straight down to the left and right of about 1500 feet. The section of the road is only 1/4 mile long, but it seems like a lot longer! This is the beginning of the ridge, you can see where the side drops away on the right.

We arrived at the Bryce Canyon area around 11:30 a.m. We stopped at Ruby's Inn to check out the room rates. We had a brochure that stated the price was $60 a night. We thought that was reasonable. When we inquired at the desk, we were told the brochure was wrong or outdated! The price was $95 not including taxes. We didn't want to pay that much so we went across the street to Bryce View Lodge and got a room for $60 (not including taxes). It turned out that Ruby's Inn owns Bryce View Lodge as well as every shop, restaurant, rodeo, stable, and gas station on the way into Bryce Canyon National Park!

After checking into our room, we drove to the park. It was cold and we knew we wouldn't be able to hike any trails, but we could look!We ate lunch at Bryce Lodge. Did I mention that it was windy and cold at Bryce Canyon? We decided to take the scenic drive after lunch. We froze our buns off at every stop! The temperature was in the low 40s, but the wind chill made it feel like the upper 20s and lower 30s.

It is amazing at Bryce to drive along among the evergreens and then come to an overlook at the canyon edge where you see hoodoos below you!

It is unbelievable how many there are and the different shapes that were made by erosion.

There was even snow on the ground around some of the hoodoos.
We enjoyed viewing the rocks, but it was time for dinner.

Bob had seen a Subway before we turned into 'Ruby's Row' so we went there for dinner--well we tried! We arrived at 6:15 p.m. and as we tried to go in the front door, the workers left through the side door. Another family also stopped for Subway and they were also disappointed. We drove back to Ruby's Row hoping to get pizza at Ruby's Diner--it was also closed. The only place open was Ruby's Restaurant--dinner was buffet and it was $17.99. The family from Subway also wanted pizza, but went to Ruby's. We felt sorry for them because the kids buffet was $10.99 and that was for 3-12 year olds. The family had 4 boys ranging in age from 4-12! Bob and I thought maybe we would pick up something in the store. We went in and gave it the Cheez-It test. We found Cheez-Its at the store outside of Zion for $5.39 a 16-ounce box. Near Capitol Reef, the local store had the same box for $4.83. Well, Ruby's price matched Zion's so we turned tail and got out of Ruby's! We left and drove west of Bryce and found a steakhouse that had reasonable prices. We enjoyed our dinner, then drove back to Bryce for the sunset.

We went to Sunset Point first. It is nothing spectacular unless you get there about an hour before sunset. We were late, but we still enjoyed the view.

Next we stopped at the Fairyland Overlook. Many of the hoodoos here look like fairies!

The night ended with us in the motel room updating the blog. We had a signal at Bryce and we tried to do as much updating as we could. As you can tell by the date of this post, we are still behind. Maybe we'll have it all updated by tomorrow and you can find out "Where in the USA RV!"