Sightseeing Day
- Zion National Park
Up and at 'em this morning to drive to Zion National Park. We made a quick swing into Mickey-Ds for a bite to eat on the road.
The drive took us up in the hills and then leveled off onto a plateau. The further we drove, the more the terrain became spires of various hued rock. It turns out that this rock is just compressed and heated sand mixed with various minerals. The park rangers told us that the equivalent of 30 dump-truck loads of rock is eroded each and every day within the park.
When we arrived at the park, we stopped at the visitor's center. After looking around a bit, we boarded the park's shuttle bus. Private cars can no longer drive up into the canyon. There is a road that you can take to go east into Utah, but it does not see many of the spectacular portions of the park.
We decided to ride the bus up into the canyon and just focus on the narrative provided to the passengers. We would get off the bus at each stop on the way back to take photos.
Here's a picture of the shuttles bus.
Here are some of the most dramatic and beautiful of the pictures that we took. I took over 100 pictures, so it was hard to share just one or two. I hope you don't get bored!
Dave is sitting in the lower left corner of this photo.
After the bus tour, we drove from the south gate of the park (where we had entered) to the east gate. This portion of the park is open to the public. Although it is a through road, you have to pay your $25 to use the road. Fortunately, we have that Senior Pass, which entitles us to enter all National Parks for free (after our initial $10 charge). It has been a great savings and we can go in and out as often as we want and don't have to worry about day or week passes.
Back to the drive. This drive took an additional 1 hour round-trip. And, it provided a very different terrain. Here's some pictures of this portion of our drive.
This rock is named "Checkerboard" Rock, for obvious reasons.
I wish you could share with us in the vastness of what we saw. But, pictures only capture such a small portion of the view. You get a small taste of how vast this view is when you see the size of the car in the pictures.
After completing our tour of Zion NP, we stopped in Springdale for lunch at a nice cafe. I ordered a burger, which would have fed a small nation, and Dave ordered a Mandarin Chicken Salad. Next, we stopped at several souvenir shops to find a charm. I settled on one that was hand-crafted by a local artist.
We enjoyed the drive home and tried to absorb the views we had seen today.
For dinner, I had leftovers from my burger. I had prepared a crockpot dinner of roast pork. Dave had some of that. He chilled by taking a nap and watching TV.
I worked on the blog a bit and downloaded tons of pictures. I had BRAVO at this campground, so I was able to watch a couple of shows I like.
Tomorrow the plan is to drive about 100 miles to Bryce Canyon National Park. Unfortunately, there is no direct route that we can take. We have to go north about 55 miles, east for about 20 miles, and then south for about 25 miles. So, we end up 25 miles from where we started, but had to travel 100 miles to do so. I fear that much of our sightseeing in Utah will be the same situation. But, believe me, the landscape is well worth it!
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