Hiking into Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

My goal in visiting our National Parks has been to try and focus on one area or activity and really dive in to experience the park in a way that most visitors may not.  For example,  this morning I woke up before sunrise and headed to Sunset Point in Bryce Canyon to capture photographs of the Bryce Amphitheater as the hoodoos lit up in the morning.  After a few shots, my next goal was to hike the Navajo Loop/Peekaboo trails - which starts at the Sunset Point Overlook. 

Instead of doing the full loop, I took a sidetrip to hike out of the canyon and up to Bryce Point, cutting the hike shorter than originally planned.  I was the only one hiking in the canyon at this time - it was really quiet.  I took probably 175 photos as I hiked through the canyon and made interesting discoveries at every turn.  The neat part of the Navajo Loop trail is when you descend to the canyon floor and find yourself surrounded by spires/hoodoo structures towering above you.  There is a section aptlly named 'Wall Street'.  As I walked between canyon walls and spires, I looked straight up and captured a few photos of the narrow canyon walls and moon in the blue sky.

Even at that hour of the morning (7:30 AM - 8:00 AM) taking liquids along for the hike was important and it started to get warm by 9:00 AM.  I would definitely like to go back to Bryce to explore the rest of the park since I only focused in the Bryce Amphitheater area - which is apparently the most scenic and interesting of the park.

The surrounding town near Bryce Canyon is kind of strange.  There seems to be one company that pretty much owns 75% of the shops and hotels in the area - under different names.  They have different levels of restaurants - from fast food type establishments to buffet to sit down/cowboy show/expensive dinner dealio.  Pretty interesting and a bit bizarre.