Zion National Park

The route from Bryce Canyon to Zion National Park only takes about four hours, through some broad valleys surrounded by low mountains. The car had a light dusting of frost as we left the parking lot. By the time we got to Zion, the temperatures were in the '80s.
Within Zion Park is a section called Kolob Canyons, we we visited first. Both areas are striking with steep cliffs of red sandstone with deep canyons carved by eons of water coursing through them. The Kolob Canyon has about a five-mile driving tour and takes little time to cover.
Zion Park, on the other hand, does not permit vehicular traffic past its parking lots and camp grounds. Instead, visitors are transported by shuttle bus along the Zion Canyon route to eight points of interest, getting on and off whenever the spirit moves. We stopped at three, two of which were outstanding. One was "Weeping Rock", which as the name implies, has water seeping out along the wall of the cliff in the more porous layers of sediment. Beneath the weeping rock was a small grotto into which we could go to watch from behind.
The other outstanding stop was the final one of the route which offers a two-mile round trip walk along the Virgin River past contrasting environments of swamp and desert to "The Narrows" where the river flows through such a narrow canyon that hikers have to wade in the river to continue. We decided to forego that pleasure and walked back to the shuttles. Along the way we encountered fat squirrels and at least one deer.
The only downside of Zion National Park is that its parking capacity is limited. If one arrives after 10 am, one must park in the local community of Springdale and take another shuttle bus to the park itself. Even with the shuttle transportation, we still managed to clock in 6.26 walking miles.

Bryce Canyon National Park

We stayed overnight at the Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel, one of the nicest Best Western hotels we've seen. It is just a five mile drive to the park entrance. Bryce Canyon National Park extends along another part of the Colorado Plateau and is at the upper level of the Grand Staircase. Once an area covered by lakes and rivers, silt and mud were deposited in layers. When the Utah part of the Colorado Plateau was uplifted, erosion of the relatively soft rock began, shaping the distinct landscape dotted with spires called "hoodoos".
Following more good advice, we drove the fifteen miles to the end of the auto route to Rainbow Point and worked backward, stopping at a total of eight viewpoints. Along the way we encountered deer and chipmunks and birds similar to the Eastern Nuthatch. As predicted, the viewing points became more crowded as we got closer to the beginning of the auto route, so we headed back to the hotel.
After lunch we rested, watched some football, and in the late afternoon returned to see Sunrise Point and Sunset Point, conveniently located a half mile from each other. Sunset Point was already getting crowded again, so we headed back, catching another group of deer having a late afternoon snack. Our grand total walking mileage, according to my pedometer, was 5.6 miles.
Our next stop will be Zion National Park.

Capitol Reef and Grand Staircase

This day's journey took us from Moab, UT (The Arches and Canyonlands National Parks) through the Capitol Reef National Park and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was essentially a half day's driving along some very twisting highways and more beautiful scenery.
Capital Reef was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building. The local word reef refers to any rocky barrier to travel. Its history includes abandoned Indian settlements with a few petroglpyhs, and pioneering settlements, also abandoned, by the Mormons, whose crops included peaches (the orchard is still there producing fruit). In the twentieth century uranium was discovered. It is a popular hiking area so we found the Visitors Center awash with hikers checking the condition of trails.
The Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument is one of the most recent areas to come under Federal protection. Part of the name comes from the Escalante River which flows through the northern region of the area. The Grand Staircase is derived from the series of five geographical plateaus which step upward from the highest level of the Grand Canyon area to at least 9,600 feet (the highest pass over which we traveled). Along the way, the plateaus when exposed do look like steps, and in the highest level the views overlooking the valleys and canyons below were breathtaking. As an additional bonus, the leaves of the aspen trees in the mountains had turned to their gorgeous golden color.
Our exploration of Bryce Canyon begins tomorrow.

Arches and Canyonlands

Our second day in Moab, UT, a town nestled in a valley between two imposing rock walls, dawned with me feeling considerably better. After our Holiday Inn Express breakfast (the food actually tasted good) we drove a short distance to the Arches National Park. Unlike the natural bridges which actually connect two areas, a geological arch is one that nature has carved over millennia into some of the massive red sandstone monoliths that are found in this area. We started with the "Delicate Arch", a small beautiful arch which some Utah residents display on their license plate. Even at the end of "high season" the park is crowded, so after that we took some advice and drove to the end of the park route worked our way backwards.
The route to each arch viewing site was a walk varying from two-tenths of a mile to at least half a mile, up and down over rocks and sand. The weather was lovely, the temperatures were in the seventies, and we handled the walking just fine. All told, we visited seven arches and got reasonably good photos of each. My pedometer reported that we had walked just short of six miles. At between 5,000 and 7,000 feet of altitude.
After lunch we drove the the upper part of Canyonlands National Park, the area known as "Island in the Sky". As was Arches, Canyonlands provides a scenic auto route to the major sites. Unlike Arches, it is laced with hiking trails and is a hiker's paradise. We stuck to the auto route.
Two rivers -- the Colorado ad the Green -- running parallel at this point have carved out the canyons. A little like the Grand Canyon, the canyons are immense and deep, stretching for miles through the desert landscape. We added another mile in this venture.
We ended the evening with dinner in a restaurant on a cliff above Moab. It was a good ending for a good day.
POSTSCRIPT: The mal de mer returned overnight. Better in the morning.

A small bump in the road

How to add excitement to a vacation? Food poisoning. On the end of our second day, I ate something at dinner which caused a long night of unhappiness, which I will leave to your imaginations. So the next morning, feeling less than wonderful, we left the Grand Canyon and headed east, then north to drive through Monument Valley. There, we found the scenery to be outstanding, with huge red rock monoliths rising out of the desert landscape.
Then we headed for the Natural Bridges National Park, where we found an entirely different landscape -- three huge stone bridges carved out of the rock surrounding the river bed by the force of water and stones carried along during the flash floods. The rangers at the Visitors Center explained that only in one other place, China, were three natural bridges in this close proximity.
We ended the day in Moab, UT. We traveled a total of nine hours, which will be the longest segment in this trip. With any luck, I will be more or less back to normal by the morrow.

Grand Canyon, Round Two

Our second day at the Grand Canyon National Park began with a semi-private tour by Jeep along a twenty-five mile stretch of the East rim. Our guide took us to the best viewing areas and gave us a non-stop narration about the park's geological, anthropological and sociological history, as well as choice tales about the elk, mountain lions and bears that roam the area. It was well worth the price, and included admission to an IMAX theater film which dramatized much of the same information.
After a late lunch we drove back into the park and resumed our exploration along the west rim. A courtesy bus ride took us to the very end of the park at a place called Hermit's Rest. Because it was a beautiful day, the park was crowded and the buses were packed. On the way back to the parking lot we saw a number of elk along the road, and as we were driving out of the park, we came upon a big male elk standing in the middle of the road. We stopped and he ambled off, a reminder that we were in his territory.

First Glimpses of Southwest Parks

My plans to send along daily messages about our travels went awry when we discovered that Internet connections in the Grand Canyon area are way overloaded for the amount of bandwidth available.
But, we started yesterday with a great visit to the Hoover Dam, a major construction miracle back in the 1930's. On from there we took historic route Highway 66 to Williams, AZ and then north to the Grand Canyon, where we walked at least five miles along the south rim. It is as awesome as it has been described. We watched the sun set and headed back to our Holiday Inn Express and dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant.
I hope to send along lots of pictures, but this one may have to suffice until we get more bandwidth.