We’d barely recovered from Pokong’s visit when the next houseguest arrived. Bruce, one of Nicholas’s engineers from Colombia, came up to spend the summer working out of the home office. Nicholas figured if the team had a tight deadline, they might as well grind it out together. In person. In Las Vegas. In August.
And if you’re going to have a coworker from Colombia staying at your house, you take him to Bryce Canyon. You take Bruce to Bryce. It’s right there. You have to.
The crew was Nicholas, Pokin, Bruce, Po On, and Eric. They picked a quieter loop trail so they wouldn’t be fighting crowds the whole way. Smart.
I was not invited on this hike.
I’m choosing to believe this was for my own protection. The sun. The elevation. My delicate constitution. Definitely not an oversight.
The hoodoos at Bryce are those tall, skinny rock spires that look like someone stacked a city out of orange sandstone and forgot to add streets. Thousands of them, packed into an amphitheater, glowing different colors depending on where the sun hits.
They started on the Fairyland Trail, which despite the name has no fairies and no bears. Disappointing on both counts.
The trail drops down into the canyon and winds through the hoodoos. Hardly anyone else on it.
The scenery at Bryce just keeps going. Every direction, more hoodoos, more layers, more orange. It’s the kind of place where you stop taking photos because you realize every single one looks the same and also incredible.
There are some natural arches along the way that frame the canyon like windows.
And then there are the trees. The pines at Bryce hang on to the canyon rim with exposed roots gripping bare rock like they’re holding on for dear life. Which they are. The ground is literally eroding out from under them.
Once you’re down in the canyon among the hoodoos, the scale hits different. They tower over you. The colors shift from orange to pink to white depending on the layer. It looks like walking through a very old, very tall, very orange city that nobody built.
And of course, the jump photos. You can’t go to a national park without jump photos. It’s a rule.
Bryce Canyon. No crowds, no bears, no problems. Bruce got to see something that doesn’t exist in Colombia. Nicholas got to take Bruce to Bryce, which I suspect was the real reason for this entire trip.
Next time, they’re bringing me.