Bryce Canyon City is a small cluster of motels, restaurants and shops at the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park, in the high desert of southern Utah, at an altitude well over two thousand metres. Panguitch, the nearest real town, lies about thirty kilometres to the west. Nothing here is old, as the village grew with the tourists, but the setting is the reason for everything.
The park is a landscape of hoodoos, tall spires of orange, pink and cream rock carved from the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau by frost and rain. Water seeps into cracks, freezes at night and thaws by day, widening the gaps, and the result is a crowded amphitheatre of stone pinnacles. The Paiute people told a story of the hoodoos as people turned to stone, and the name of the park comes from Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon settler who ran cattle here in the 1870s. At sunrise and sunset, the rocks glow in shades that change by the minute.
Scenic Byway 12, the road that passes here, is one of the finest roads in the American West. It runs between Capitol Reef and Bryce through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, crossing a ridge known as the Hogback, with steep drop-offs on both sides, and rising through aspen and pine forest on Boulder Mountain. The surface is good, the corners are open and the views are huge, though in summer traffic of RVs and cars can be heavy near the park. Wildlife, including mule deer and pronghorn, can cross the road, particularly at dusk.
The altitude matters. Nights are cold even in summer, and snow can fall in late spring and autumn, with ice on the road in winter. Afternoon thunderstorms are common in July and August, and the dry air makes the sun strong. Bring layers, water and sunscreen. The best months are May to October.
Services are limited. There is fuel at Bryce Canyon City, though prices are high, and a few places to eat and sleep that are often full in the high season. Panguitch has more stations and shops, and Tropic, a small town to the east, has some services. Beyond that, towns are small and distances are long, so keep the tank topped up.
Walk a short way down into the hoodoos if you can. The view from the rim is grand, but among the pillars, in the quiet and the red dust, the scale is easier to feel.