We woke up really early in the morning, took down the tent and cleaned up our campsite before departing Zion NP. It took us almost two hours to drive to Bryce Canyon. The scenery along the way was fantastic. We saw a family of deer on the side of the road. We also drove through Dixie National Forest to get to our destination. The road is a little wind-y, and we passed through many small villages that made us have to slow down to follow the speed limit.
When we got in the park, we went straight to the Visitor Center to get some information. There is a little shop there that sells very nice souvenirs. The brochure we got from the Park Entrance gives a really nice map that we used to plan our visit.
It is a total of 18 miles (one-way distance) to drive through the main park, and there are 14 viewpoints along the road to look over the outstanding views of the canyon. The park brochure suggested that we should drive to the park's southern end and stop at the overlooks on our return.
From our experience, it's a good idea to do that if you have about 4-5 hours to stop at every viewpoint and do a little hike in some spots, but if you don't have much time, you should go straight to the most incredible spots like Sunrise, Sunset, Inspiration and Bryce Points.
However, if you have a good amount of time to explore the park, following the park's suggestion will give the most benefit. I like this idea since we found the view gets increasingly better and more fascinating by starting from southern end of the park and moving on toward the northern part. If we did it the other way around, we would have found the park less and less interesting as we went along the way. The only problem that might occur with starting from the southern end is that your camera's battery might be dead before you get to the most gorgeous part of the park, like mine did! Well, make sure you have a fully charged battery before approaching this way. :-)
Rainbow Point -- the southern end of the park
Yovimpa Point -- This one requires a little hike to get to the overlook.
Black Birch Canyon
Ponderosa Canyon
Agua Canyon
Natural Bridge -- This is the only interesting spot in the southern part of the park.
Farview Point
Piracy Point -- we had to hike on snow to get to this point.
Swamp Canyon
Bryce Point -- The WOW spot after seeing a lot of small canyons from the southern part.
Inspiration Point -- my FAVORITE spot in the entire park
Sunset Point -- Another incredible spot to get a good shot, but my camera's battery died here and I had to use my underwater camera instead. :-(
Sunrise Point -- There is a trail that you can take to enjoy the "hoodoos" close up.
