Zion National Park

Thursday, October 6

From the campsite in Hurricane to Zion, we had about a 30-minute drive. The geography was getting cooler with each mile that passed. First, mountains and mesas in the distance, and then, multi-colored red rocks surrounded us everywhere.

Even the Zion National Park sign and the road through the park are red!

Since the year 2000, you have to take a shuttle through the Zion National Park canyon to view it. There are simply too many people who visit the park each year, and traffic had gotten too bad. Recognizing that would mean Auggie would need to stay in the van for an hour or two, he and I found the one dog-friendly hike in the park and took that first for some exercise.

We were accompanied by a mercurial sky all day – it started off in the morning when we got to the park with blue sky and big, puffy white clouds that created shadows that my camera both loved and hated. Here are some of the shots that the camera loved.

Because of the huge amount of rain that had fallen the previous day, the Virgin River looked like churning milky Frappucino from Starbucks.

Auggie and I finished our couple-mile hike, and then I put him in the van to take an afternoon snooze. I jumped into the canyon shuttle to take a look at what was down that canyon.

Turned out that it was (more!) pretty cool stuff!

I got a glimpse of the Three Patriarchs, the Grotto and the Zion Lodge, as well as Angels Landing. (All seen through the windows of the shuttle, so I didn’t take photos.)

The end of the line was at Temple of Sinawava, where there was a one-mile trail to walk. Here are some shots from that walk.

From the end of that one-mile paved trail starts another apparently very cool trail called “The Narrows,” but the Narrows were closed the day we were there due to the risk of flash-flooding from the rain. I think I missed some of the cool parts of Zion due to that. Boo.

(In fact, all throughout Zion you see signs posted about the dangers of flash-flooding. First, they advise you to keep an eye on the weather and any signs of rain and/or storms, as well as sudden running water and/or the sound of it. Then, the next piece of advice is – if you are not able to escape a flash flood – not to try and outrun it, but rather to seek higher ground. And if you can’t do that, find a rock or something else to take the brunt of the initial impact of the water for you.)

This is not a joke!

Remember that mercurial sky I mentioned? It was getting progressively colder and wetter the longer I was in the canyon. The blue skies we’d enjoyed that morning on our walk were gone, and rain clouds had set heavily in. I took Auggie for a quick final walk around the Zion parking lot, and then we jumped into the van to undertake the VERY curvy, VERY steep Zion-Mount Carmel Highway that would take us out of the park and farther east in the direction of Bryce Canyon National Park.

More curves, more up-and-down-inclines – we just can’t seem to escape it!  J  But it was accompanied by more gorgeous geography, so I just had to smile.

I watched with trepidation, however, as the thermometer dropped slowly and steadily to below freezing. And then … the snow started.

Not heavy at first, but there were fat, icy raindrops hitting the windshield as we climbed. I saw cars coming from the other direction whose front grills and roofs were covered with a layer of snow. And as we got to the top of the mountain we were climbing, we looked all around us to see a light dusting of snow covering everything, and some thick storm clouds in the direction we were headed.

Welcome to an early winter in the mountains, Christine.

And then just as quickly as the cloud cover had hit, we broke free of it and found some blue sky again. And we were treated to red rocks with a pretty dusting of snow on them in the distance. Surely a different view than we would have gotten in the heat of the summer, but a cool view just the same.

As we got closer to Bryce Canyon National Park, we started seeing some more interesting geography – hoodoos. Take a look below at these cool iron-rich, red-rock formations (those are the hoodoos). They look like those fragile pillars you make at the beach when you let watery sand drip through your fingers. But instead of sand, these were made of 60-million-year-old rock that had been slowly and steadily eroded by water and chemical decomposition over time. These hoodoos and what are called “eroding fins” are what make up Bryce Canyon National Park.

But … we would see more of that tomorrow. First, we found our campsite next to Bryce Canyon National Park and pulled into our spot, where we could enjoy the snow on the tree just outside the door of the Champagne Chevy. It was going to be a COLD night!

When we took our evening walk around the deserted campground, Auggie and I encountered two male mule deer with big, multi-point antlers. I had to pull Auggie in tightly again and try to break his eye contact with the deer – the last thing we needed was two well-armored angry deer charging us!

Back in the van, I turned the furnace on, had some dinner and read some more of Potter Book Seven. Auggie and I fell asleep snuggled up close for warmth!