We headed for the trails this morning, starting at Sunset Point. We decided to take Navajo loop to the bottom, and then see where we felt like going from there. Navajo Loop trail takes hikers down a very steep descent by breaking it into a long series of switchbacks. It was fascinating to look down on all the people heading back and forth. Lots of tourists in flip-flops. (The Bryce information guide tells us that #1, #2, and #3 of the top ten causes of injuries in the park are “Bad Choice of Footwear.”) The switchbacks end at the aptly-named “Wall Street” section, where a Douglas fir towers between two sheer walls.

I found myself having to stop and force myself to look in 360 degrees because there is literally no direction in which you can turn and not find something unusual, interesting, or spectacular. Balancing rocks, rocks with embedded crystal, grottos, rattlesnakes (someone had shooed him off the trail before we had a chance to see him), beautiful trees, vistas, and the list goes on.

The trails are fantastically easy and dangerous at the same time. You can go from a perfectly safe stroll to a death-defying creep. I had to use what Shelli calls my “mean voice” a couple of times when the boys got a little closer to drop-offs than I wanted them to. Bryce Canyon, overall, is much less uptight than other places I’ve seen about offering oblivious tourists the opportunity to remove themselves from the gene pool. Here you’ll find meticulously maintained railings only at the prime, crowded viewing areas. But even those railings cover only the most obvious places for one to kill oneself. Woe to the photographer who moves around with one eye in the viewfinder and the other closed.