Calling Bryce a canyon is generous, since it is really a series of enormous amphitheatres eaten into the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau, and what fills them is a forest of stone. The hoodoos, as these spires are called, stand in crowds of orange, pink, and cream, some as tall as a ten-storey building, all of them carved by frost. Water seeps into cracks in the soft limestone, freezes at night, thaws by day, and slowly prises the rock apart. The cycle happens on well over a hundred nights a year, which is why the place looks so unfinished.
The Paiute people had a story for it. They said the hoodoos were the Legend People, turned to stone by a trickster as punishment, and standing at the rim in the low light it is not hard to see why the idea took hold. The park takes its name from Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon settler who ran cattle here in the 1870s and is said to have described it as a hell of a place to lose a cow. Whether he said exactly that or not, the line has lasted longer than his homestead.
The ride in is a spur off Utah Highway 12, heading south on Highway 63 and then onto the park road along the plateau rim. The road is smooth, with gentle gradients, and rises past pine and aspen to viewpoints at some eight to nine thousand feet. Altitude matters more than the road does: mornings are cold even in summer, and the air at the rim is thin enough to make a short walk feel longer than it should. Expect slow tourist traffic and plenty of pull-offs. Winter can bring snow, though the main road is usually kept clear.
Services are limited near the rim, though the lodge and a few shops nearby keep riders watered and fed. For fuel, Panguitch, about thirty kilometres north, is the safe choice, and the communities along Highway 12 are small. Go for sunrise if you can bear the early start; the light at the amphitheatre in the first hour of day is the reason this park has the reputation it does. Take a jacket, and walk at least a few steps below the rim, where the hoodoos close around you and the silence is complete.