Follow the tour from start to finish: the welcome at the first stop, then for each stop the story you hear on the way there and what you see when you arrive.
Welcome back. This is the climb out, about half a mile and five hundred feet up to Sunset Point. At this altitude, there's no prize for speed: stop whenever you like, catch your breath, and look back. I've saved different stories for the way up.
Let's start with the man whose name is on everything here.
In 1875, a Scottish-born pioneer named Ebenezer Bryce settled with his family in the valley below these cliffs. He built a road up to the plateau to reach timber and firewood, and with his neighbors he dug an irrigation ditch about seven miles long from Paria Creek.
Locals started calling the amphitheater at the end of his road Bryce's canyon. And when someone asked him about it, he's remembered for one line: it's a hell of a place to lose a cow.
Around 1880, the family moved on to Arizona. He never imagined his name would still be here, on one of the most visited parks in America.
As you climb, look at the bark on the big pines.
These tall trees with orange, puzzle-piece bark are ponderosa pines. On a warm day, put your nose close to the bark. Many people swear it smells of vanilla or butterscotch.
Listen and watch for who else lives here: Steller's jays, with their dark crests and loud calls, ravens riding the updrafts along the walls, and mule deer, named for their big ears, picking their way across slopes that would scare a mountain goat.
It's a reminder that this isn't just a gallery of rock. It's somebody's home.
Take a breather, and turn around for a moment. The colors look different on the way up.
Let's talk about color. The oranges, reds and yellows come from iron in the rock, oxidized: rust, essentially. The softer lavender and purple tones come from manganese. The whiter bands are where there's less of either.
That's why Bryce changes all day. Early sun lights the hoodoos from the side and makes them glow. At midday they flatten out, and in the late afternoon the reds deepen again. Same rocks, different light.
If you're here for a while, come back to the rim at another time of day. You'll see a different canyon.
Halfway up. Here's how the world found out about this place.
By 1919, a rancher named Ruby Syrett and his wife Minnie were feeding and housing visitors in tents near Sunset Point. The next year they built a lodge called Tourist's Rest, with cabins and an open-air dance floor.
Then the Union Pacific Railroad came. It bought them out in 1923, and the Syretts started Ruby's Inn just outside what would become the park. The railroad built the Bryce Canyon Lodge, which opened in 1925, designed by the architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood. It sold tours that linked Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon.
That lodge is still standing near the rim, a National Historic Landmark. If you have time, step inside.
Almost there. A last story for the last switchbacks.
Bryce became a national monument in 1923, and a national park in 1928.
But the park's boundaries can't stop what's happening to its edge. The rim of the amphitheater wears back by roughly one to four feet every hundred years. The hoodoos you've just walked among will fall, and new ones will be carved from the cliffs you're standing on now.
So the view at the top is a single frame of a very long film. You're lucky to see this one.
That's the rim just above you. A few more steps.
And you're back at Sunset Point. Well climbed.
One last thing to come back for: the night. Bryce is one of the darkest places left in the country. On a moonless night, you can see around seven thousand five hundred stars from up here. The Paiute said the Legend People are still standing out there. On a night like that, under all those stars, it's easy to believe them.
Thanks for walking Two Bridges with me.