CES CAN WAIT
Life springs eternal
On a gaudy neon street
Not that I care at all
Can’t stand the Strip
The large Casino halls
I hate this town
It’s all I can recall
Nowhere is enough away
So I’m leaving Las Vegas today
And I won’t be back
Oh, no!
Daylight robbery
The rented Jeep Grand Cherokee silently cruises down the road, framed by a row of snow-dusted pines. It stops in front of a small gate with a wooden tollbooth on its left side.
I open the window to the cool breeze, breathing in the crisp, fresh mountain air. The old lady on the other side opens her window and greets me with a big smile. The kind you will never find in New York City, or Vegas, for that matter. I smile back. “Welcome to Bryce National Park”, she announces happily. There are no cars around. Just the two of us, and about a yard of freezing void. At least it’s sunny.
“Hi”, I answer, trying to find an appropriate smile – one that would be wide but not too wide to look artificial. “Have you visited a National Park this year?” she asks. “No, I haven’t, sorry. It’s only January 5th,” I reply apologetically. “No problem at all, Sir,” she replies with the same big, wide grin, “which state are you from?” I explain that I didn’t come from any state but from another country, far, far away. “Oh, that’s too bad,” she says, her smile not changing even a tiny bit, “they just changed the pricing table a few days ago. It’s $100 for non-US residents.”
Normally, I’m not easily thrown off guard. Perhaps it was the sharp contrast between her friendly demeanor and the sheer ransom request. In any case, stunned by this daylight robbery, I pulled out my iPhone and paid up without uttering a single word. “It’s a wonderful day out,” said the voice with the big smile. I bud her farewell and drove away slowly, feeling like a sucker who was just mugged by a nice old lady. Did I just pay a hundred bucks to get into an empty National Park during the lowest week of the year?!
Six hours earlier
The plane touched down at Harry Reid International Airport about an hour before dawn. It has been a direct 15hrs flight from Tel Aviv. Boeing claims their 787 Dreamliner makes long flights less exhausting. I guess they never flew in row 47. I stretch my legs as far as they could go – which ain’t much, Given where I’m seated. Still, I should be feeling lucky. The flight to Las Vegas was booked solid. It’s the first week of the year, and everyone who is someone in the tech industry is coming to town for the biggest Consumer Electronics Show in the world – CES.
Based in Las Vegas, the city where understatement is NEVER in fashion, the show is equally oversized. 12 giant halls, housing over 4,000 company booths covering everything electronic, spread over 250,000 square meters of floor space (about 35 Soccer fields, in case you were wondering). 150,000 visitors came to CES 2026; make that 150,001, me included.
Some people just love Vegas. Count me out. It’s one big attention deficit disorder, on amphetamines. The glings, the blings, the lights, the flickers, the Better-Call-Soul-esque billboards, the Casinos’ neons, the congestion, the $15 all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants, and the $9.23 Cappuccino – really?! More than $9 for a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts?! And why, for crying out loud, must they hide the hotel elevators behind a disorienting labyrinth of crupie tables and grotesque slot machines? I’m joking on the last one. We all know it’s on purpose. God, I hate this town! And it’s not a town really, Vegas is more like an endless sprawl of disjointed resorts, separated by eight-lane highways. Think I’m exaggerating? Try walking from one hotel to another. Good luck!
Weighing my options
In short, Vegas is a headache. And CES? That’s a migraine within a headache. Since I’ve been to both, I was not looking forward to the occasion. While waiting in the long immigration queue, I started weighing my options. With the show starting the following day, I could just drop by the hotel, rest, and do some emails. I could, on the other hand, relieve myself of some adrenaline (and cash) at the Vegas Speedway. Seven laps in a Ferrari 296 GTB might do the trick.
Or, I could just run to the foothills. The gambling Mecca is surrounded by some of the nation’s most spectacular National Parks. With a cool winter sun rising into a cloudless day, the third option became ever more convincing. Since I’ve already done Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon, and Zion on previous trips, I searched Google Maps for a park I hadn’t covered. It didn’t take me much to locate Bryce Canyon, four hours’ drive away.
Love US National Parks? Try these posts first: * Yosemite at its best * Road to Zion * Deserted on Desert Rock * On a ride to nowhere
Should I, or shouldn’t I? My heart raced as I calculated the odds. I just landed after 15 hours in Economy, and I am ten time zone jetlagged. It’s 850km round-trip, not including time spent in the park, and I need to be back in town by evening. It’s a bright day, without any precipitation expected en route. I hate Vegas, and I’m not even sure my room is ready for check-in. What should I do? What could I do? I climbed the oversized Jeep Grand Cherokee (Thank Avis for the free upgrade), put the Nav on Bryce, selected “Roadtrip” in my Apple Music Playlists, and drove off towards the distant mountains to the Northeast.
On the road to Bryce
There is something very soothing about road trips. I don’t know what it is exactly, but the fact is that as soon as I passed Vegas town limits, a relaxed smile took over. With Sheryl Crow’s ’90s hit playing, I was “Leaving Las Vegas”, both literally and figuratively. Taking the Highway, with a long drive ahead of me, I was feeling no hint of exhaustion or fatigue. Interstate 15 is a long, wide stretch of American Freeway connecting Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. It cuts through a larger-than-life landscape of dry, empty, and rugged terrain. Just as you would imagine a scene from an old Western movie.
Be warned, the corny Western theme will repeat itself throughout the day .
At first, you don’t feel it, but a quick look at the thermometer just outside Ceder City, Utah, confirms what I suspected earlier – I’ve been steadily climbing over the last 300km. Hovering just above zero Centigrade and with flurries of fresh snow crowning the surrounding peaks, I was now close to 2,000m above. Soon thereafter, I turned off the highway and into a series of sideroads that took me for the remaining distance to Bryce. The roads are both achingly beautiful and vastly empty. For a person born and raised right next to the crowded shores of the Mediterranean, this is an experience on a different scale.
About Bryce
Bryce Canyon is a small National Park located in southwestern Utah. Despite its name, Bryce Canyon is not really a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters carved into the high plateau. The place is distinctive for its geological structures called Hoodoos – tall, chimney-shaped rocks formed by frost, wind, and stream erosion – as well as for the bright red, orange, and white colors of the sedimentary rock bed. The park receives fewer visitors than nearby Zion and the Grand Canyon, although with 2.5 million visitors a year, “few” must be a relative term.
Bryce’s main road stretches for about 30km to Rainbow Point, which at 2,800m elevation is the park’s highest point. But you don’t need to drive all the way up there to the end to enjoy its key attraction, the Bryce Amphitheater. This giant feature lies just a mile or so off the main entrance.
Not for Athletes
To understand what this thing really is, imagine being on the flat top of a really, really big Layered cake. Now, picture someone taking a gigantic spoon and carving a whole chunk away, exposing the layers as it cuts through. At Bryce, you are the ant on top, looking from the edge, down. This is what you see from the four viewing points at Bryce Amphitheater.
The National Park was opened in the late 1920s, when cars were becoming commonplace, and was designed to accommodate vehicles. Or at least the number of vehicles back one hundred years ago. I start my Brice experience by driving to the most distant of the four points, Bryce Point. Distant being relative, it is just a few short minutes’ drive away. All points include small parking places right next to the viewing platforms. Clearly, the 1920s designers didn’t want park visitors to waste any unnecessary calories. parking in one of the many vacant spots. Personally, I hate congestion. Know anyone who doesn’t? “This week is perfect,” I tell myself as I leave the SUV behind. “I hate to think what’s going on here during peak season.”
Four Points
A short walk in a pair of inadequate shoes brings me, somewhat wobblingly, to the edge of the vantage point. My breath is taken away as I gaze downwards, not because of the cold or the elevation (around 2,400m high at Bryce Point), but because of the view. Words will fail to describe it. Imagine a winter Western movie, complete with snow-covered cliffs, dry pine trees, and bright red and yellow rocks. Now, crank the scene a few notches higher, and you would still be off.
The top rim is white frosted with a light, fresh cover of snow. Looking down, an immense sliced piece of exposed earth reveals tantalizing layers of bright red, yellow, and white rock punctuated by hundreds of look-alike hoodoos. Bryce Amphitheater in January is nothing short of insane. I try to consume it all while keeping my balance on the icy concrete platform. Clearly, I wasn’t properly dressed for the occasion. Hell, what is life without bone fractures and broken limbs?
With this in mind, I carefully step back to the empty car park. Turn on the ignition. Turn the seat warmers to “max” and slowly drive back to the other three “must-see” points.
Inspiration, Sunrise, and Sunset points are more of the same. Not to say you can skip them, as they provide different angles at the same mesmerizing Bryce Amphitheater. All are easily accessible by car, all have a slightly frightening, slippery path to the viewing platform, and all must be hell to access during the busy weeks of mid-summer and Spring Break. But, hey, if I’m destined to freeze my bones off on the high Utah Mesa, I might as well enjoy pristine parking spots!
Going south
So the four Bryce lookouts are really close to one another, and just a two-minute drive away from the National Park entrance. But Bryce doesn’t end with the Theater. The road continues south for about 30km until it reaches Rainbow Point. Rainbow doubles as the Park’s southernmost point as well as its highest one. The road to Rainbow hugs the top of the mesa with the major drop-offs to its left. There are quite a few stops on the way – all of them on the opposite side. I decide to get to Rainbow first and check those stops on the way back.
Temperatures drop below zero as I reach the abandoned car park. I take my time finding the best park spot possible, imagining (with pleasure) what hell this place must be like in mid-summer. Have you ever bluffed an entire Texas Hold’em table with a 2 and a 7? That’s the feeling!! I slam the door behind me, all smug and gladd… and almost flip on a patch of black ice. I wait for my Adrenaline rush to scale back before taking a more careful approach to the vista point.
Closer to Heaven
At close to 2,800m, Rainbow Point is truly inspiring. Being so high, the cover of fresh snow is deeper and goes down the drop quite some distance before fading out. The look to the north stretches uninterrupted for many dozens of miles. To witness the majesty of nature on such an immense scale is to understand how small we are in this world (but apparently not too small to ruin it). Closer to the platform, a series of white-dusted red rocks protrude out of a dense forest of pines. It’s so easy to imagine two lone cowboys riding up the ridge, you feel it must be a scene from a Hollywood Western you saw as a kid many years ago.
Inspired and cold, I return to my Grand Cherokee, press the seat warmer and ignition buttons simultaneously, and drive away. Driving on top of the high Mesa feels like traveling a bit closer to Haven. With “Truly” by “Siggarette After Sex” playing, the Atmosphere in the car – or, more precisely, between my two ears – is both serene and elated. With the cliffs now on my right side, including all the viewing platforms, I take my time and stop at every one. Partly because time is on my side, and partly because they all have limited parking spaces that are, at this point in time, completely empty. Call me whatever names you wanna call me, I’m a sucker for “Freebies”. And Bryce, on a late afternoon on the first week of January, feels like the biggest “Freebie” of all! …That cost me $100 to enter.
The best of the rest
I’ll spare you the names of all the stops and only list the ones worth fighting over during peak season rush hour.
- Auga Canyon Overlook – Two giant hoodoos up close, with a great view over the 3,200m high Barney Top table mountain.
- Natural Bridge Overlook – One of Bryce Canyon’s essentials. The natural rock bridge is a natural arch, or window, formed primarily by the expansion of ice in cracks deep within the rock. TripAdvisor ranks it as the #1 thing to see in Bryce. I’m not sure it will get my “numero uno,” but #3 should be pretty good too.
- Swamp Canyon Trailhead – A Narrow creek gives a more “genuine” Canyon ambiance. The only “real” canyon in Bryce Canyon’s scenic drive.
Not leaving Las Vegas
The sun takes a low azimuth at 4pm as I leave Bryce NP behind. With Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” playing loudly on the speakers, I set the car course due north to Road 63. It’s four hours to Las Vegas. Four hours to the blinking lights of the Casinos, the cacaphony of the slot machines and Crupie tables, the garish “Ambulance Chasers” Billboards, underpriced 1,500 Cal buffet restaurants, overpriced everything else, CES, Endless Meetings… A migraine starts creeping up my neck towards my temples, as out of the dark, I start seeing the bright lights of Las Vegas.
