One Day Guide to Bryce Canyon National Park

If you ever find yourself in southwestern Utah, Bryce Canyon National Park is a must see! I've gotten to visit this park twice now, and each time did not disappoint. The park is so big, it truly is not possible to see everything in just one day, but we tried to see as much as we could! Here's how I've spent one day in Bryce Canyon National Park-

If you only have one day to explore the park make sure you get there early! I've traveled the park both ways, by shuttle and by stopping our car at each view point we wanted to stop at. While the shuttles do stop at a lot of the main spots, I personally liked when we traveled by our own car because we were in full control of how long we could spend at each spot.

If you only have one day in the park and are planning on doing a hike, I highly suggest doing the Navajo Loop and Queen Gardens Combination Trail. This trail is ranked as moderate, which was definitely appropriate, but it certainly was not an impossible hike. This was the hike I've done both times visiting the park because I think it's a great way to see a lot of the canyon with not too strenuous of a hike! If you do this hike, I recommend starting at Wall Street. The loop is about 3 miles total and took us about 2.5 hours. This hike allowed us to walk down into the canyon and see all of the different rock formations, but also took us back up to expose the beautiful views of the hoodoos, including the most famous one, Thor's Hammer.

After finishing the Combination Trail hike, we chose to do the 15-mile Southern Scenic Drive along Highway 12. This drive allowed us to view Bryce Canyon from all different angles, and stop at several viewpoints along the way, including Farview Point, Natural Bridge, Agua Canyon, Ponderosa Canyon, Rainbow Point, and Yovimpa Point to name a few.

After this drive, we decided to head out of the park for a little while and grab dinner in the surrounding town. The shuttle will take you out of the park to this town, and take you back in. Upon coming back into the park, we wanted to catch the sunset, and if you're anything like me and love sunsets, of course you want to know the best areas to watch them! After speaking to one of the park rangers, he said that many think that Sunset Point is the best place to watch the sunset, however, he actually suggested we head over to Inspiration Point if we wanted to truly catch the best sunset with less crowds than Sunset Point.

Bryce Canyon has so many other trails to choose from depending on what you're looking to see and what difficulty level you're looking for, and is is truly such a spectacular park! I can't wait to get back to Bryce Canyon one day and I hope this post gave you some ideas for your trip. Thanks for reading, and remember, there's always more to be explored :)

-nicole elizabeth