HooDoo You Think You Are

We twice have visited the land of hoodoos, otherwise known as Bryce Canyon National Park.  So, how does nature create formations as amazing as these?  You start with an ancient sea bed that filled with many layers of sediment (think sand).  The sediment became so thick and heavy that it compressed the bottom layers into rock, not hard rock like granite, but soft rock as in sandstone.  Then through massive earthquakes what was a sea bed was thrust upward about 10,000 feet.  We still can’t imagine the forces the the quakes that went with them that would have thrust an earth plate up that far.  And then the erupted plateau of sandstone eroded through wind, water, freezing and thawing and created these sandstone hoodoos.  Kind of mind boggling isn’t it?

Not only did we drive along the the top of the plateau and look down upon the hoodoos, we also hiked down into the main formation of them, looking back up.  Even though we only hiked down a few hundred feet, it was a tough hike back up in the thin air of 8,000 feet plus.

It is known as Bryce Canyon as a Mormon settler by the last name of Bryce homesteaded in the area and cut timber from the amphitheaters off the plateau.  It became known as Bryce’s Canyon and the name stuck when it became a national park in 1928.  It has to be an amazing area to homestead what with the hoodoos and distant vistas such as this one.

We also biked in an area leading into Bryce knows as Red Canyon.  The road there follows along a large wash and they have had to carve “arches” into some of the rocks for road passage.  And there are some incredibly red rocks in Red Canyon.

One formation we looked forward to seeing was one we had seen when we were last here six years ago – Poodle Rock.  If you use your imagination, can you see the shape of a Poodle dog?  The photo on the left is from six years ago, and on the right from our current visit.  We felt erosion hadn’t been kind to the Poodle.

If you would like to see more of our pictures from Bryce Canyon, click on the following link.  https://picasaweb.google.com/116107386675555024952/BryceCanyonNP