Beautiful Bryce Canyon

We decided to take a little trip to Bryce Canyon one weekend at the end of July.  It was fun to explore another national park that happens to be right in our own backyard!  The kids had a great time and especially loved staying in the hotel.  It's funny, because it doesn't seem to matter whether our hotel is nice or not (it wasn't that great) or where we are, our kids LOVE staying in hotels!  When we first got to Bryce we checked in, got changed into our swimsuits, and went swimming:

 

 

 

After swimming we went back to our room to clean up and then went to eat at the Ruby's Inn buffet:

I'm not usually a big fan of buffets, but this one was actually one of the better one's I've ever been to.

Finally, we headed into the park to check out the spectacular hoodoos:

 

 

We followed a long trail of switchbacks down into the bottom of the canyon

Some neat trees that grew up from the bottom of the canyon

Cool balancing rock

Landon loved riding around in the backpack!

Sun setting over the amphitheater

Before retiring for the night we checked out some of the neat little shops and got our cowboy on!

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we headed out again to explore Bryce.  Here are some of the things we saw/did:

More pics of the amphitheater

 

Petted a dog visiting from New York

 

Walked through cool archways on the trail

The "Queen Victoria" Hoo-Doo (quite a hike to get there, but very worthwhile.  Notice the dragon-head hoodoo behind the Queen.

We found this cool waterfall outside the park with a neat little wading pool

We did so much driving this trip, that Landon had time to discover the "art" of picking his nose!

We had a great time and I can't believe how well the kids did with all of the hiking around.  They rarely complained.  We will definitely go back in a couple of years when Landon can do his own walking and doesn't have to be carried around in the backpack!