Utah Day 2 – Tropic + Bryce Canyon + Kodachrome Basin | Boon Vong

One of the best things about the town of Tropic Utah is the weather. In June it was an amazing 58 degrees in the morning and a high of about 74 degrees when we were there. All thanks to the high elevation of 6,000+ ft. There’s a lot of wind and tons of UV light but I’ll take it over the heat and rain back home in Georgia.

These are the views around the cabin and town around 5am MST in the morning.

This is the view looking toward the west, right across from the cabin.

One thing about Tropic and this general area is that I had no cell service, sometimes not even SOS. Not until I got past the city sign did I get normal 5G or LTE, which is really odd. So plan accordingly.

These are views going back up north towards the roundabout that will take you to Bryce Canyon. Being in a valley you still have to get quite high up to see the light for a sunrise or sunset.

It’s a brief 10 minute drive from Tropic to get to this vista. There’s a pull off section that’s supposedly really good for stargazing and night sky photography.

This grocery store has a good amount of stuff for us city folks! Ramen, veggies, fruit drinks, chips, etc.

This is one of streets heading west/north. Like most of the towns here they mostly stop pretty quick as you get closer to the mountain plateaus.

On this road there’s a fancy restaurant ($50-100/meal). It also is a backway to a long hiking path to enter from the canyon floor of Bryce. It’s considered wilderness so again plan according when it comes to safety.

The view looking back into Tropic is very nice in the morning.

That tiny pixel off in the distance is a jack rabbit!

There is a coffee shop that opens at 7am.

So here’s the first main destination of the trip, Bryce canyon. On a really deep cut tangent, I’m old enough to remember the cg software plugin KPT Bryce. It was used to generate other worldly landscapes that were basically Bryce Canyon, but it was often times used for the background of rave flyers with anime girls in the front.

Bryce is celebrating its 100 anniversary and I really enjoyed that fact that this park is not that busy and you can pretty do whatever at your own pace–whether it be driving the full 18 miles or hike easy or hard paths.

These are doll prairie dogs!! Which you see in a later post!!

Random photos of Bryce Canyon from easy pull off spots. So amazing.

I’m actually kinda afraid of heights so these 8000+ ft high vistas are pretty nerve wracking for me.

Same shot but one is with the X100 and other A7. It’s taken me over ten years to finally enjoy editing the raw files of the X100. Out of camera it’s just bland and uninspiring, but the raw file can actually produce some full frame like results, with the haze and vignetting that I personally like.

These aspen trees we definitely don’t have in Georgia. I’d really like to go visit the forest full of them in upper Utah one day. These trees, being so close to the parking lot, were all ruined by folks carving their names into them.

Yep that’s a walking path that you can take down and around the amphitheater base.

Onward to lunch:

After lunch we headed south to another small town, Cannonville, and past that to Kodachrome Basin. Yep, named after the actual Kodak film. This whole time I couldn’t help but notice that Utah is like a big sprawling video game map. You go ten miles and a new texture pack is downloaded with all sorts of different colors.

This part of Utah is a bit hotter than Tropic though, with daytime temps in the 80’s. There’s a campground AND a cool laundromat inside this park. One of the trails leads up to a scary point on top of the plateau, which obviously is tailor made for IG photos. This area I think would actually be perfect for so many cosplay and themed photo shots. Being in the land of the dinosaurs so many things work, and of course lone ninja gaiden standing on a ridge surveying the land. Kodachrome basin is also a certified night sky place so galaxy photos here would be amazing.