Bryce Canyon

This is high desert plateau, hundreds of kilometres from any sea, and swimming plays no part in a stay. The few bodies of water nearby, such as Tropic Reservoir and Panguitch Lake, are cold mountain reservoirs used for fishing and paddling, not bathing. A motel pool is the realistic option on a hot afternoon.

Eating here is practical rather than a pleasure in itself. Bryce Canyon City, Tropic and Panguitch serve ranch-style breakfasts, steaks, burgers, Navajo tacos and pie to people refuelling between hikes, and the historic lodge inside the park has a dining room with more atmosphere than ambition. Out along Scenic Byway 12, in Escalante and Boulder, a few kitchens cook seriously with local produce, and they are worth the drive for a dinner.

There is no local cuisine to seek out, choice thins sharply after dark and out of season, and alcohol is limited by Utah's rules. Most visitors pack picnic lunches for the trail.

The reason to come is the landscape, and the built heritage is modest. Bryce Canyon Lodge, a timber-and-stone building from the 1920s, is a fine example of early national park architecture, and the visitor centre explains the geology and the Paiute stories of the hoodoos. Panguitch keeps a small historic centre of red-brick pioneer houses, and the Mormon farming towns of Tropic and Cannonville show how the valley was settled.

Further along Highway 12, the Anasazi State Park Museum in Boulder preserves an ancestral Puebloan village. That is close to the whole list, and an afternoon covers it.

There is no nightlife to speak of. The gateway towns are small, largely Mormon communities with very few bars, restaurants close early, and most visitors are in bed early so they can be on the rim for sunrise. The night here belongs to the sky, and that is covered under the outdoors.

The Bryce Amphitheater is one of the strangest and most beautiful landscapes on earth: thousands of orange, pink and cream hoodoos crowd a series of natural bowls cut into the edge of a plateau at about 2,400 to 2,700m. The Rim Trail links the viewpoints of Sunrise, Sunset, Inspiration and Bryce Points. The Navajo Loop and Queen's Garden trails drop you among the spires, and the longer Fairyland and Peekaboo loops have the canyon almost to yourself. Horseback trails run down into the formations, and the park is one of the darkest places in the country, so ranger-led astronomy evenings and night-sky walks are part of a stay.

The surroundings add plenty. Red Canyon has a paved cycle path and hoodoo trails, Kodachrome Basin has its stone chimneys, and Grand Staircase-Escalante has slot canyons and slickrock hikes along Scenic Byway 12. Zion is about two hours away. Summer days are warm and clear at altitude, autumn is crisp, and from November to April the hoodoos are frosted with snow and the rim is open for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

Most outings from here go to more landscape, and those count as the outdoors. Very few places to visit are towns or heritage sites. Panguitch's pioneer main street is half an hour away, and the drive along Scenic Byway 12 passes the small towns of Escalante and Boulder, where the Anasazi State Park Museum shows an excavated ancestral Puebloan village. Kanab, about an hour and a half south, trades on its past as a setting for Hollywood Westerns. Cedar City, a similar distance west, is a pleasant college town.

None of these will fill a day on its own. Visitors who want towns and history are better served elsewhere.

Children tend to love the hoodoos, and the park makes them easy to show off. The paved stretch of the Rim Trail between Sunrise and Sunset Points is flat and short, the Junior Ranger programme gives younger visitors a purpose, and the Queen's Garden trail is a manageable first descent among the spires for most school-age children. Horse rides, stargazing evenings and the motel pools of the gateway towns round out a few days.

The limits are real. The air is thin at the rim, the steep switchbacks are tiring on the climb out, unfenced drop-offs need a hand held, and there is nothing made for children beyond the park itself. It suits a family with older children who like walking far better than toddlers.

A car is the normal way to visit, and on these quiet, well-kept roads it is easy. The park's scenic drive runs about 30km along the plateau to Rainbow Point, with pull-outs at every viewpoint, and in the main season a free shuttle loops between the gateway town and the busiest overlooks, sparing visitors the crowded car parks. Within the amphitheatre, the Rim Trail lets you walk between the main viewpoints.

The effort is in reaching it and moving beyond it. The nearest sizeable airports are several hours' drive away, there is no public transport linking the towns, and outings along Highway 12 or to Zion mean long stretches behind the wheel. Snow can close the southern end of the park road in winter.

Shopping is limited to the essentials and souvenirs. The gateway town has a large general store with camping supplies, Western wear and park mementos, and roadside rock shops sell fossils, geodes and polished stone. The park's own shops add books and maps. Nobody comes here to shop.

Rooms are the biggest cost. There are few beds for the number of visitors, so from late spring to early autumn the lodges and motels in Bryce Canyon City and Tropic charge high-season rates, and the best-placed rooms fill early. The small choice of restaurants keeps meal prices firm too, with little at the cheap end beyond diner breakfasts and burgers.

Park entrance fees add to the bill, especially on a road trip through several of the region's parks, but once inside, the trails, viewpoints, summer shuttle and ranger programmes cost nothing more. A visitor can save a good deal by camping in the park or the national forest around it, staying in the older motels of Panguitch, or packing picnic lunches. Winter is far cheaper, though much of the area's hospitality closes or scales back then.

Around the park itself, live entertainment means a cowboy music show with dinner in the gateway town during the summer months. The one serious offer is in Cedar City, about an hour and a half west, where the long-established Utah Shakespeare Festival stages a repertory of Shakespeare and other plays from early summer into autumn. A theatre-loving visitor can plan one evening around it, but this is not a place for regular concerts or performances.

There is no spa or bathing culture here, only the occasional hotel hot tub or massage room. What the area does offer is quiet: small towns, empty roads, cool mountain air and some of the darkest night skies in the country, which make an evening on a lodge porch genuinely calming. Most days, though, are spent climbing in and out of the canyon at altitude, and visitors looking for pampering should plan it elsewhere.