Glorious Utah, taking up where we left off

We drove back into Bryce Canyon the next morning and down the rim road to Swamp Canyon, which was the next overlook we would have seen if we had carried on the previous evening. The sky was overcast, but this only served to bring out the wonderful warm tones of the rock.



Next we drove to Paria View which lies up a small side turning off the main road.
With each successive stop the hoodoos were becoming more plentiful and prominent. These are the spires of rock that are so distinctive in Bryce. The Bryce area was once populated by the Paiute Native Americans whose mythology said that the hoodoos were people turned to stone by coyotes. They were called Anka-ku-was-a-wits, meaning 'red painted faces'.
In the 5th picture down you can see Yellow Creek which is one of the creeks that take the water from the streams flowing down the side of the Canyon. This flows into the Paria River which the Mormons followed into Bryce in the 1850's to settle the area. The Canyon was named after Ebenezer Bryce who homesteaded here in the 1870's. Most of the Mormons and the Paiutes left in the 1880's when successive flooding and drought got the better of them.
In spite of the  haze we still got good views over towards the Aquarius Plateau. 












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