Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah Stock Photo

Only a thin red line divides fantasy from geology in Utah’s Bryce Canyon. A hike amid the park’s rococo hoodoos—sandstone spires arrayed in amazing mazes, fantastically animated forms shimmering in colors that Revlon can only covet—lends itself to true flights of fancy. The hoodoos rule. The Queens Garden/Peekaboo figure-eight loop (6.5 miles) is Bryce’s signature hoodoo hike. Working clockwise from Sunrise Point, descend into Bryce Amphitheater on the Queens Garden Trail into hoodooland. Then pick up the Peekaboo Trail to crisscross a ridge rife with hoodoos, and climb out via Wall Street’s towering sandstone spires. That’s all warm-up for the eight-mile Fairyland Loop, which loses and gains 2,309 cumulative feet as it navigates first a hoodoo graveyard of stumpy towers, then a forest of tall hoodoos that rise to the canyon rim. The park’s popular full-moon hikes—no flashlights permitted—drop into this same hoodoo fairyland.