Day 75-78 - Zion & Bryce National Parks

From Lake Powell we headed to Zion National Park in southern Utah.  We had to buy a special guide pass ($15) for the Beast to pass thru the tunnel into the park – basically they have to stop the traffic going the other way so the Beast can go through the tallest part of the tunnel!  What an entrance to the park…the scenery is incredible…you travel right down into the base of the canyon…tons of switchbacks. 

Our first night in Zion was the strangest night of our trip. The biker dude, (complete with Harley motorcycle and long ponytail) in the monster motorhome next to us (ours looked puny) came to chat and next thing you know, his friend stops by who was pretty scary looking (turns out he was in a band called UFO and was the roommate of a band member from Motley Crue).  They are telling us that in the town they live in it is the law that you have to own a gun (I don’t know if I really believe this).  He offered to show me all the guns he had in his motorhome but I gratefully declined.  Later in the evening after continued talk of guns, he gave us the tour of his motorhome, and it was the tackiest thing we’d ever seen…it looked like a band tour bus from the 80s – mirrors on the ceiling and everywhere else, a stuffed rattlesnake in a glass case on display, lights lining the ceiling and stairs (I could go on).  Then somehow, John leaves me there and I am forced to sing karaoke with the biker dudes.  It was so bizarre it was funny.   I could have killed John for saying …”Cami will stay, I have to look after Gus so he won’t bark”.  Somehow, I managed to survive the whole ordeal…I had a few choice words for John upon my return let me tell you!  

The next day, we took the shuttle from the campground into the park (no one is allowed to drive in as they didn’t build enough parking spots in the park either) and then went on a couple of nice hikes into the canyon (the walls of the Zion canyon are huge!!)…and its greener than you think it would be because the rock is so porous it can hold lots of water.

We stopped for lunch at the lodge and Jack had his first ice cream cone and subsequent first ice cream cone disaster when the ice cream plopped on the grass.  He wasn’t impressed!  It was a long day of hiking so we had escaped to the Beast and didn’t come out till the morning (it had nothing to do with the fact I didn’t want to be kareoking again!).

The next couple of days were at Bryce Canyon National Park.  The days are warm but this park is at a very high altitude (8,000 -9,000 feet) and is cold at night.  There are lots of tenters at this campground and we were feeling pretty old in our big Beast…where has the time gone…we were the teenagers in the tent not that long ago…but what happened?

We started the day with a hike along the rim of the canyon – what a spectacular sight.  I can see why this rivals the Grand Canyon!  It is red hoodoo like formations as far as you can see!  We weren’t going to do another hike but it was one of the coolest places we’ve seen so we did another hike down into the canyon…absolutely astounding scenery - a very steep climb back up but definitely worth every painstaking step!

The red rock is gorgeous but we have had enough and have decided to forgo yet another red rock national park that we had been planning to see and head north – we need to see more familiar landscape and are now thinking about home.  Destination:  Park City, Utah.