![\"bryce-mojave-trail-crowd.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/bryce-mojave-trail-crowd.jpg\" "\\"bryce-mojave-trail-crowd.jpg\\"")
<\/a>He wasn’t exaggerating. \u00a0 For whatever reason, Bryce has been chosen by far more people that the other Utah parks we’ve visited, in fact, one million visitors per year. \u00a0 Now, Bryce is a very nice park, but I can’t quite see that it is twice as good as Capitol Reef or Mesa Verde (each of which get about half a million visitors per year), or three times as good as Big Bend. \u00a0 I suspect the volume of visitors has to do with the fact that it is close to Grand Canyon and Zion, and because you can see the best views from your car without any hiking effort.<\/p>\nThe tour buses are here in vast fleets, segregated by foreign country. \u00a0 Standing at the overlooks I could tell which bus had arrived by a sudden wave of people speaking a different language. \u00a0 There were Japanese, Italian, German, and Scandinavian waves, and as tour groups \u00a0 tend to do, they would all go to the same place at the same time. \u00a0 This caused logjams here and there, but Bryce has been engineered to handle the crowds, like Disneyland. \u00a0 There are bus \u00a0 depots at the major stops, special bus parking areas, and traffic patterns. \u00a0 A shuttle service operates in the park and reduces individual car traffic & parking problem, too. \u00a0 Still, I wonder if in a few years cars may be prohibited from parts of the park as is currently done in Zion.<\/p>\n
In Zion, you are in the bottom of the canyon looking (and hiking) up. \u00a0 In Bryce, you are on a narrow ridge that defines one edge of a valley, and all the hikes go down. \u00a0 It’s more like Grand Canyon in that respect, but the valley (they call it a canyon) is not as well defined on the opposite side. \u00a0 The best viewing is in sunny conditions, especially as the sun is rising or setting.<\/p>\n Tree-sniffing! \u00a0 The bark of the Ponderosa Pines sometimes has a distinct odor like butterscotch, if you’re willing to press your nose to one and take a big sniff. \u00a0 Being able to watch this is one of the upsides of having crowds in the park.<\/p>\n Part of the reason the park is still so busy is that the season is very short. \u00a0 The park had its last snow in mid-June, and temperatures began to go below freezing at night in mid-August. \u00a0 Days are warm right now, but storms are frequent and the lightning is really dangerous. \u00a0 People stand out on the exposed ridges and get zapped at the rate of about one person every other year. \u00a0 We got chased off Rainbow Point by an approaching line of showers and high winds while we were observing a 1,600 year-old Bristlecone Pine tree. \u00a0 With the constantly-changing weather (and a bit of laziness), we were only able to hike about three miles all day.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>One popular ranger-led activity is pictured at right. \u00a0 Care to guess what it is?<\/p>\n