Drive to Utah / Zion National Park

Wednesday, October 5

We woke up and got ourselves moving fairly quickly in the morning. We had a bit of a drive ahead of us, so we got started tout de suite.

We were headed to Zion National Park, which is in the lower southwestern corner of the state of Utah. The first leg of this drive was about an hour’s ride to Las Vegas, where we would pick up the interstate that would take us over toward Zion.

Here is Vegas, that shining beacon of a city, in the distance. This is the first time I’ve ever approached Vegas from the road. It’s also the first time I’ve really seen it “without its makeup on.” It’s not nearly as cool-looking as it is at night when you have a bunch of fun, silly, (slightly? More-than-slightly?) alcohol-buzzing colleagues with you and it’s four in the morning at a sales meeting. 

But that’s a story for another time ...

As we drove across the southern tip of Nevada, there were more cool, multi-colored layers of nature to look at. 

And the red rocks for which Utah is known slowly became more prominent, making me stare with more jaw-dropping gazes in all directions. This is such cool territory to an east-coaster!

Throughout the course of our day, we had a bunch of errands to run, so we made lots of stops. Nothing remarkable, so I’ll keep this short.

We arrived at our campsite in Hurricane, Utah, in pouring cold rain. We stayed in the van and made some soup to warm us up, read more Potter and had a fairly early evening of it.