Day 37 - Zion

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

Today has been long, but good.  We left 1000 Lakes around 9:30.  We stopped and got gas and snacks in Loa, just west of Torrey where we stayed.  These are tiny, desert towns.  We traveled for a while and missed two turns.  These are winding desert roads.  We stopped in Rockdale, UT to fix lunch from the camper.  Then we finally arrived at our campground … in the middle of NOwhere.  No cell service.  They have wifi, but you have to go across the street to the gas station/check-in to pick it up.  The site is red dirt, dusty and trashy.  Yikes.  We will only be here two nights.  We set up the camper and unhitched and left.  No reason to stay!  Upside:  we are two minutes from the East park entrance of Zion.  Downside:  The east entrance is not the main entrance.  It is a 14-mile scenic drive (Zion-Mount Carmel Highway) to the main entrance where you have to park to ride the shuttle into the main section of Zion.  Whew.  Lots of hoops to jump through here.  Another upside:  The scenic drive is beautiful.  It starts off with a great view of “Checkerboard Mesa” and goes through two tunnels, one of which is 1.1 miles long with several cut-outs where you can see into the canyon.  Then there is a series of switchbacks (new vocabulary word) down to the main entrance.  We traveled through the park and were lucky enough to find a parking space at the Human History Museum, where we picked up the girls’ junior ranger books and watched an orientation film.  Then we headed out the west side into Springdale, a really cute town just outside the park.  We kept on going and found a Walmart in Hurricane (her-ih-ken) where we spent too much money, but got restocked.  I think I feel so isolated that I wanted to store up a little bit.  We stopped in Springdale at The Flying Monkey for dinner.  I had a yummy spinach and grilled chicken salad with feta, craisins and pecans.  Then we had some shaved ice and visited a rock shop.  We got back to the camper pretty late.  (At least it was dark and we couldn’t see how unwelcoming it is.  OK, it's not that bad.)  And we still had to put away groceries.  It was 10:30 by the time the girls got into bed and we are supposed to have an early morning tomorrow.  Uh Oh!
Zion 1