Bryce Canyon and Highway 12

I really love Utah. There are so many natural wonders in every corner of it. I have lived hours from Bryce Canyon my whole life and finally we got to visit it on our way home from Arizona. I highly recommend this drive (highway 12) to all my local friends. It's gorgeous! We even got to do it during free national parks week! If we couldn't be with family on Easter, I'm glad we spent the day viewing some of God's many amazing creations.

We got into our hotel in Bryce late Saturday night, so we just went to bed and slept. The next morning it was chilly, and we looked outside and there was snow on our car! It kept snowing off & on all morning. We ate breakfast with what seemed to be all of Europe (I'm serious, there was German, French, and other languages I couldn't place being spoken in the breakfast room by 90% of the people!) and then headed into the park. We stopped by the General Store to press some pennies (yay) then hit up the overlooks. There are no railings or anything so you get a view worthy of postcards. The snow made it even more beautiful!


 





I love this one




Cody always has to go RIGHT to the edge of everything.






We didn't spend very long at all in the park, just enough time to get these gorgeous shots, then we headed home along Highway 12. It's a scenic byway, and boy was it ever! We stopped at almost every overlook area, and by the end of the day we were so tired of saying "Wow pretty!" we'd just get out of the car, snap a few photo's, and get back in the car wordlessly! Hah!







We saw every type of weather from snow, rain, hail, sun, wind, you name it!








Crazy right? If you made it through all of those I'm proud. I know other people's vacation pictures are boring, but I blog partly for other people to read, and partly for myself so I can remember details and how I felt. So I'm not offended if you were zzzzzz.

After we hit the end of the road, (we didn't have time to go into the Capitol Reef park, we had all of Utah to travel home through still) and got back on the freeway, things went faster but were a whole lot less pretty. ;) I am forever boycotting the Tesoro Gas station in Nephi for it's atrocious bathrooms.

The good news was that the cat wasn't hiding under the bed refusing to come out like last time we went away. She was sitting in the front window waiting for us. When we unpacked, she hopped in an empty duffle bag we'd had all our shoes in, and gave us a look that plainly said "Next time you go, you're taking me with you!" Good luck with that, cat.