Day 33 - Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Day Trip — Zion National Park to Bryce Canyon and Return — 180 Miles RT
Today we set out to visit Bryce Canyon. We drove through Mount Zion park and actually got to see more of it then what we saw coming in with the RV, which was pretty scary with all the switch backs. Some of the the round smooth rock formation reminded Richard of cow patties. I instead thought they looked like mounds of sahne or meringue….guess what was on my mind?
Bryce Canyon is approx 90 from Zion and a definite must see! On the way we drove thought Red Rock and say some more interesting rock formations:
The erosion here form fantastic shapes that are called Hoodoo and Indian word – to cast a spell. They reminded us of Fairy tale castles with many turrids. We did not hike – but looked at the many different vistas. Again the vistas were awesome and as is becoming our Sandra: we wish we had another day here. However, after 4 days our schedule has us leaving for Las Vegas the tomorrow morning. We feel very strongly about bringing the kids out here to see these beautiful parks.
Here’s a panoramic photo (actually 5 photos stitched together) of Bryce Canyon.
Day 32 - Monday, April 2, 2007
Zion National Park, UT — Day 2
The park has a shuttle service that takes you to each of the significant points; this prevents the major traffic jams that they had in the past and protects the environment. The park shuttle drivers does a great job in explaining the different hikes available along the route– by difficulty level, type of terrain, and what you will see along the hike. So after we picked a hike (Emerald Pools – Upper, Middle and Lower) that we thought was at our difficulty level we set out to conquer the mountain. If you have every been to Maui, you know the road to Hana…well, it was the road to Hana on foot with steep drop offs…boulders in the middle of the path the size of Mini Coopers you had to navigate around …all of this while the path is going straight up. Who picked this hike?…it was supposed to be moderate …of course our egos got bruised even more as kids ran passed us like mountain goats. What are they doing up here anyway? It’s much to steep. Somewhere at about 7000 feet somebody stole all the oxygen.. seemed like we could hardly catch our breath!
Once of the good things about camping you meet some nice folks. Today we met the campers next to us David and Julie with little 18 mo old Jake. They were from northern Utah and they told us they camped as often as they could. They actually hiked with Jake in a piggy back like contraption. Folks in Utah are very healthy!! Later on in the evening while everyone was sitting around the camp fire…David offered us Bear sausage…yup ,you heard right. Bear sausage… Julie informed us that David and his uncles are all hunters…the sausage was actually very tasty…no it did not taste like chicken… more like pork. However, something in that sausage gave me nightmares. All night long I dreamed about a Bear looking for me. No more Bear sausage for me, thank you.
Day 31 - Sunday, April 1, 2007
Zion National Park, UT
Today was our rest day at Zion. We took a couple short walks with Lucy along the only trail in the park where dogs were allowed.
We found that most all the National Parks are not “pet-friendly”. Guess they do not want the pets chasing the game through the park. Actually the next day when we did walk some of the other hikes we found that there was good reason to not let the pets on these other trails; it would be much too dangerous to allow pets there since they could cause a hiker to take a tumble down some of those steep drop offs on many of these mountain trails and that would not be good!
The main river traversing the park is the Virgin River although not deep it was rather fast moving. Lucy going in for a drink got swept away rather quickly and we had to shout at her come several times before she was able to catch hold and pull herself out. Her look of surprise mirrored our look of fear of watching her being swept away.
In this campsite in the park we’re dry camping. We have no hookups here for electric water or sewer although the campground does have drinking water stations were we can get water if we need it. So once it got dark we could only use a few lamps for a limited time that were run off of the RV house batteries. This was ok – since the hiking pretty much wore us out.
Day 30 - Saturday, March 31, 2007
Flagstaff, AZ to Zion National Park, UT — 248 Miles
Today we left Arizona and headed for the Utah border. Our destination today is Zion National Park in Utah. We traveled North out of Flagstaff 
toward Page, AZ. As we got close to Utah we had to cross over the Glen Canyon Dam.
The construction on the dam began in October of 1956. By 1959, the Glen Canyon Bridge was completed permitting the trucks to deliver equipment and materials for the dam and the new town of PAGE, ARIZONA. The crest of the dam is 638 feet above the Colorado River. We stopped at the beginning of the bridge to take this photo and several others. After crossing the bridge and rounding a few curves we came to the Utah border where Sylvia snapped this shot as we passed the welcome sign.
Wow what a journey. The park was built in 1930 – the roads are narrow and in order for the RV to pass through the tunnels they had to close the traffice on the other side which allowed Richard to travel through the middle of the tunnel. I followed with the car – I had to take deep breaths as the tunnel was close to a mile long and so my clostophobia would not get the better of me. I kept saying to myself ..your ok, breath, your ok….
The park is breathtaking – Green canyons, red cliffs, and deep blue skies. The scenery sort of stops you in your tracts. The rocks according to the guide were formed in an environment as varied as sand dunes and shallow sea bottoms. The sand dunes were the tallest in the world millions of years ago and today these sand dunes are now the majestic cliffs and canyons of sand stone. Here are a photo taken from our campsite in the park… What a place to behold!
