If you want to hit all 13 viewpoints, a full Bryce Canyon tour should take you about three hours. However, you could easily spend all day exploring the hiking trails and other side attractions in the national park. We always recommend taking your time when visiting a national park, since the best places to see tend to be the ones that are a little more out of the way. Like all parks, Bryce Canyon is there to be explored as thoroughly as you’d like, and there’s no reason you should have to leave after checking out the main viewpoints on the Amphitheater route.
The Bryce Amphitheater is a bowl-shaped area carved out by centuries of rain and melting snow and features some of the most gorgeous vistas in the entire park. If you’re only planning on visiting the canyon for a short time, then we recommend focusing on the Amphitheater route. This area also holds the world’s largest collection of “hoodoos,” tall, thin spires of rock formed by erosion. The Bryce Amphitheater is filled with hundreds of hoodoos, creating a completely unique view that can’t be replicated in other parks.
If you want to explore the park in a little more depth, then we recommend taking the southern scenic drive all the way around the canyon. Seeing every sight on this drive will take four hours or more, but it’s well worth the extra time to see some of Bryce Canyon’s lesser-known sites. The scenic route contains the highest points in the park, standing almost 10,000 feet above sea level. The views here feature fewer hoodoos and more steep cliffs and forested areas.
