Zion

I flew into Las Vegas last night to meet up with my parents. We plan to drive to Zion and Bryce National Parks in the next couple of days. It's a 3 hour drive to Springdale, which is the small Utah town that caters to the Park tourism community. The land between the two places is rather desolate. It's all very grey, flat and dusty. We will gain about 4000 ft elevation between Vegas and Zion. (LAX is pretty close to sea level and Las Vegas is about 2000 ft elevation.) We drive through 3 states on this short drive: Nevada, a sliver of Arizona and finally Utah. As we get closer to Zion the land changes. It gets very dramatic. It also gets redder. We finally reach Springdale around lunch time. The hotel staff at the Quality Inn Montclair Suites recommends a burger place up the street. Everything that a tourist crowd needs is on this street. There is also a shuttle that stops off at various places in town and takes people to the Visitor Center at the Park. There is an East/West street through Zion that is driveable, however the street going north into the Canyon is closed to private vehicles during peak season. It's actually kind of nice to leave the car at the hotel. Our lunch was at Blondie's Diner, which is a little house converted to a restaurant. There are domesticated elk in a pen in back. We learn that the elk will become lunch when we see elk burgers on the menu. The food is quite good, even my mom thinks so, and she's rather particular. Their berry pie is warm and goes well with the vanilla ice cream. After lunch and settling our stuff in our hotel room, we grab a shuttle to check out the park. I remember from visiting national parks as a kid that the staff are really helpful, and this remains the case. We ask for guidance on seeing the park in the short time we have and the ranger suggests places we should definitely stop. We hop on the canyon shuttle and spend the afternoon getting on and off at various beautiful spots to look at the dramatic rock formations and take pictures. The weather is beautiful, and the higher elevations make the sky just look incredibly clear and blue. The lodge at Zion is not one of the great lodges such as at Yosemite or Yellowstone, however there is a nice easy trail that takes you to a few waterfalls. We head out and spot a flock of wild turkeys hanging out in the creek. This is not the last we will see of wild turkeys. Ma and Ba both drop out after awhile, but I continue to the lowest waterfall, which is a small one falling off an overhang. The pool underneath is not much to look at but the water spray adds a pleasant, cool feeling to the place. After I get back to the lodge, we continue up the canyon. Along the way, we spot a couple of rock climbers on the cliffs. One of them had set up his sleep sling on the cliff. Zion has a multitude of trails of varying degrees of difficulty which of course we didn't explore, but there is so much to see just from the shuttle. And as the afternoon wears on and the sun starts to set, the rock changes colour and texture at every change in the light. It's really rather remarkable. After we completed the canyon circuit, we headed back to the hotel to rest a little before heading back to town for dinner. There are many options and it looked like Pizza & Noodle was a popular choice so we headed there. Indeed their pizzas were delicious, really good dough. It's a very casual restaurant and we are surrounded by families with lots of young, blond kids. The crowd in the area in general seems very diverse: foreign tourists, families with young kids, older people, young hikers. The full moon is on Sunday so before going to bed I try and take some pictures of the full moon. I need better equipment! The hotel has free WiFi so a little surfing gets us back in touch with the real world.