OTR: See For Miles at Bryce Canyon

You've heard the expression, "you can see for miles", right? Bryce Point, the highest point inside Bryce Canyon, has it all. See for miles? How about 104 miles? Yep, you read that right - one hundred and four miles is the sight distance from the top. Let's compare it for a minute ... Yosemite National Park has a visibility of 47 miles, Seattle 33 miles and Chicago/LA & DC all tie with only 12 miles. 104 is pretty impressive.  It is second in visual distance only to Great Basin National Park which has 116 miles of visibility. 

Forget about the "mile high" city. We're pushing in at almost 2 miles ... top elevation at Bryce Point is 9,115. Your probably thinking, wow, what a drive up. Not as much as you think. Our elevation here at the campground is 6,900 . One thing we didn't think about was the air pressure.  Definitely feeling a heaviness when breathing - especially on the longer walks and hikes.

The beauty of Bryce Canyon cannot be explained with words alone. Even the pictures don't really do it justice, but here are a few.

The wildlife are alive and well inside the park. They are obviously well accustomed to humans being in their territory as they barely twitch an ear at all the passers by as they munch right along the side of the road. See these two boys?

  And how about this gorgeous little fawn?

The natural beauty is so amazing and something you really have to see in person to fully enjoy. We would highly recommend that anyone going to Utah plan a visit to Bryce Canyon! We've been to the Grand Canyon before and this tops it for us.

On another note, we've tried it a couple times now, but third times a charm: The boys finally were able to complete everything they needed to earn their Junior Ranger's Badges for Bryce Canyon National Park. Good job guys!

Salt Lake City, UT

As the sign says, Life Elevated. They aren't kidding. Most of the areas where we have driven through have been between 4000-8000 in elevation. Beside a very ugly fuel bill, this is also some of the most interesting country we've seen.

Some of the largest grain elevators I've ever seen in my time driving across the country a few times are located in the burbs of SLC. Here are some photos of them...

Yep, those are all photos of different grain elevators. All within minutes of Salt Lake City.

Then, I was able to capture a couple more photos:

I don't know if you can read the names on the side ... we were driving by at 60 and didn't get a second chance to take a better photo, but the top one says Desert Mill, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the bottom one says Welfare Square, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormon's own some of these massive grain storage elevators.

What a gorgeous downtown area - and clean! Salt Lake is obviously going through some new, major construction right now and the freeways are a big part of it. Really pretty freeways. Up to 6 lanes of freeway in each direction includes one HOV lane.  I guess if you have to have traffic to sit in from time to time, this has got to be one of the prettiest sections of freeways we've ever seen.

The other thing we noticed were all the churches.

See the tall, white steeple back there

 Not that we were expecting less driving through Salt Lake City, but it was interesting to see a church surrounded by homes and then a mile down the road another church surrounded by more homes and again, down the road more of the same.

Another one

Another tall steeple...

There were so many more photos, but I digress. It was very interesting to see so many community based churches, in what I can only imagine you would attend your local, neighborhood church. Any of my Mormon friends or folks from SLC who can tell us more?

While ours was a very quick drive through, this is definitely worthy of a stop for a couple days. Next trip for sure!