Ever come across an incredible hotel that stops you mid-scroll and makes you think, Wow, wouldn’t it be something to stay there? We do, too—all the time. Welcome to Friday Fantasy, where we highlight amazing hotels, lodges, cabins, tents, campsites, and other places perched in perfect outdoor settings. Read on for the intel you need to book an upcoming adventure here. Or at least dream about it.
Waking up in the middle of the night can be maddening. Unless you’re able to gaze directly up at the firmament.
The skies are the star attraction at Clear Sky Resorts Bryce Canyon, a new property set in a quiet gulch just 16 miles southeast of Bryce Canyon National Park. Far from light pollution and adjacent to this certified International Dark Sky Park, it offers superb stargazing by night and an otherworldly landscape by day.
Most nights, that is. I could consider it unfortunate that rain fell during my visit, but precipitation is good for the high desert. And while I lacked lucid starry skies, I enjoyed a daytime rainbow and an evening lightning show, both plenty compensatory. Upon waking at first light—usually discomfiting to this night owl—I watched raindrops run peaceful rivulets down the glass wall of my geodesic dome.
The resort is a collection of these futuristic structures, their surfaces half-glass and half-paneled. The window sides of each dome face up and also away from other units, though as darkness fell, I couldn’t help wondering (hey, a little) about anyone looking in. But all I had to do was close the lower tier of curtains, leaving the top ones open for viewing.
Hal Feinberg, resort founder and co-owner, said in the dining hall that evening that he came up with the sky-dome idea after seeing a teepee hotel in Livingston, Montana, that felt close to nature yet offered decks and nice indoor furniture.
In 2021, he opened Clear Sky Resorts Grand Canyon, 30 miles from the South Rim, with 45 sky domes that, like the ones in Utah, are connected by paths to shared activity spaces. With the Bryce iteration, Feinberg upgraded from using clear PVC canvas windows to ones made of glass. The result, he said, “is like going from a Chevy to a Corvette.”
Clear Sky Resorts Bryce Canyon opened August 9. It currently offers 25 domes, out of an intended final total of 62. Also underway is an employee-housing structure for up to 40 people.
This is luxury glamping with a jazzy, celestial theme. In the lobby, I passed a robot whose concierge duties include greeting guests by name and pulling up hiking maps. The nearby dining-hall dome, also known as the café, featured a gleaming central boomerang-shaped bar. That evening as friends and I stared out of the café’s 28-foot-tall window, the amber lights lining the surrounding gravel paths and access road glowed like airport jetways.
A singer-guitarist played during dinner, and afterward, between showers, we hung out around the decorative fire pit on the deck. Daytime, people lounged there at the outdoor tables, and a grandfather smiled as his two grandsons went at it with cornhole.
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You can sign up for stargazing tours and outdoor yoga, or walk a pleasant mile or two around the property on the gravel paths and roadway. A nearby option is to drive ten miles to the northernmost hike in the national park, the moderate (0.8 mile one-way, with just 150 feet of elevation gain). This waterfall hike, a rarity for the area, winds along the park boundary.
But most visitors are here to explore the heart of . Friends and I intended to hike with April LeFevre, a fourth-generation area resident who drove shuttle groups in Bryce for 18 years before opening her own outfit, . Rain, however, nixed the morning’s hike, and instead we motored along on the main park road, UT-63, which stretches 18 miles north to south. Before doubling back to finish at the famed Bryce Amphitheater overlook near the entrance, we marveled at seeing the arch at Natural Bridge, 12 miles in, and two miles later the Hunter spire at Agua Canyon, come in and out of the mist.
Along the way, LeFevre recounted many local tales, including that of LeRoy Parker, later known as the outlaw Butch Cassidy, who grew up 50 miles away in Circleville. His life changed when he was 13, LeFevre said, after he visited a mercantile to pick up a pair of overalls he’d had repaired, and, finding the place closed, slipped through a window to take them and a pie. He left a note regarding payment, but the owner pressed charges. Though acquitted, the youth henceforth resented authority. LeFevre also said that while Cassidy is thought to have died with his partner, the Sundance Kid, in Bolivia, an area rancher (now long gone) told her that Cassidy had returned to Circleville. The rancher claimed to have given the former robber a ride in his wagon. Some say Cassidy is buried in a secret location in Circleville.
Anyone visiting the park will want to see the spindly hoodoos, striated in red, gold, and white. Bryce Canyon has the greatest concentration of hoodoos in the world: 12 amphitheaters of them. According to an ancient Piaute , the hoodoos were once people who’d committed evil acts. A coyote spirit invited them all to a party, to trap them, and turned them to stone.
In geological terms, the hoodoos and holes in the walls are remnants from 50 million years ago when the area was a lake surrounded by rock walls. The spires formed from erosion, weather, and ice expansion during freeze-thaw cycles.
Later, when the clouds cleared, our crew hiked the , a 1.8-mile round-trip, to reach a formation that supposedly looks like Queen Victoria. I didn’t think too much of the resemblance, but marveled at the views of endless golden towers and labyrinths. This hike is commonly for a stellar three-miler. I’d have loved to do the 4.2-mile hike to see the top-heavy hoodoos of the .
Bryce is known as an otherworldly place to see the sunrise (head to Sunrise Point) as it lights up the hoodoos. Rangers offer in the park as well, and doing that would be amazing.
The landscape is also a bird-watchers’ dream, drawing hawks, eagles, peregrine falcons, and swifts. I delighted in seeing both ponderosa pine, which smells of vanilla, and, at the highest point of the canyon, ancient twisted bristlecone pines. The mellow one-mile cuts through a forest, with side views of hoodoos. (This trail is considered largely wheelchair accessible, with assistance.)
Much of the hiking at Bryce begins at about 8,000 feet, and the Bristlecone Loop reaches 9,100 feet, so in coming from lower elevation, be prepared to deal with altitude. Always bring water and pay attention to intake.
Choice Rooms
The Standard Sky Domes sleep two. I stayed in a Deluxe, called Milky Way, with more controls for lights and temperature and vents than I possibly knew what to do with. The place had a patio (some have decks) and kitchenette, a king bed and two twin beds in a loft, and a rad shower with six adjustable side jets. The Milky Way ($730) was dubbed an XL in that it slept four, and I thought about how much fun (aside from the snoring) it would be to have my husband and two sons here.
The designs varied. One friend stayed in a two-occupant Deluxe called the Big Dipper ($630) with no loft but a cool swinging chair. Another was in Nova ($680), also double occupancy, that had, I kid you not, a dance floor, disco ball, and flashing lights. There’s a two-suite dome that sleeps eight ($1,125) if you want to go big.
Eat and Drink
The resort’s Sky Nova Café Bar and Grill, open to the public, affords wall-to-ceiling views of the canyon and sky and has a lot of fun themed touches, like little inverted domes within the water glasses and crazily multicolored silverware.
Entrées are generously sized and range from $20 and to $35, though the 20-ounce Atlas Ribeye is $49—and that thing is a brick. I ordered the heavenly pan-seared Titan’s Trout with lemon-dill sauce.
I didn’t know I liked barbecue that much until I had lunch at i.d.k. Barbecue, six miles from the resort in the town of Tropic. While I had the sweet chicken and baked beans, also on offer were pulled pork, beef brisket, slaw, potato salad, and cornbread.
Ebenezer’s Barn and Grill, 15 miles away in Bryce Canyon City, is a popular “gourmet cowboy” music hall, with a fixed-price meal served to hundreds in turn. The night we visited, Due West, a country band founded in Nashville, Tennessee, played original tunes.
When to Go
Clear Sky is open year-round, as is Bryce Canyon. Most visitors to the park come from June through September to take advantage of the warmer weather and clearest skies. The months of October through May are cooler but the upsides are fewer crowds, autumn foliage, and spring wildflowers. Some say the park is at its most beautiful with white snow atop the red rock.
How to Get There
The small Bryce Canyon Airport is just four miles north of the park. Most visitors fly into Salt Lake City and rent a car for the spectacular 294-mile drive south.
Don’t Miss
Stick your head into the lobby of the Bryce Canyon Lodge, built in 1924 in the Rustic style of national-park architecture and one of some half dozen lodges designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it meshes development, landscape architecture, and the environment. The lodge is located in the forest only 700 feet from the canyon rim, and a beautiful half-mile walk from Sunrise Point.
Details
Price: From $525
Address: 855 UT-12, Cannonville, UT 84718
888 704 4445
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Alison Osius is a senior editor at ϳԹ and part of the travel team. She lives in Western Colorado. Previously, she had only flown over Bryce Canyon, though in a small plane with a sunset view. This was a prized chance to explore the park from the ground.
Looking for more great travel intel?
For more by this author, see a personal tale of years of hiking the Storm King Memorial Trail, just off Interstate 70, in Western Colorado, site of a famous firefighting tragedy.
See also this tribute to the most beautiful mountain town in Colorado.
And a lifetime’s accumulated camping tips.