This was our day to say good bye to the Grand Canyon and our lovely cabin 40 feet from the rim–but we extended our time in the park a little by leaving via the Desert View Road that leads eastwards out of the Canyon, and stopped multiple times along the way, including a stop at an excavation site of an Indian village from ca. 1200 A.D., and at the Desert View Visitor Center and the watchtower that was built there in the 1930s. That was a lot of fun, although rather crowded. We stopped a few more times on our way east and then north to take in more views, especially of the Little Colorado River and then also when we crossed the Colorado. We had bought some picnic lunches to take along and had lunch at one of those stops.
By about mid-afternoon, we got to Bryce Canyon. We checked into our hotel right outside the National Park area, and had a pizza for dinner after settling in. But since it was only about 7:30 pm, and we had been driving all day, we did venture into the park, which was not at all crowded, and took the shortest trail down from Sunset Point, the Navajo trail, which only took about an hour and was really beautiful. I loved the formations and the colors, and the walk itself was just really comfortable and not at all scary–but the fact remains that after the Grand Canyon, Bryce just seems like a miniature national park, and absolutely nothing about the trails, even the steep ones, scared me or felt truly way down or high up. We walked to Sunrise Point, the next point over, in the dusk, and then left to go back to our hotel and get a good night’s rest.