Ending

Well, we didn’t hit any time zones today so I have a bit of spare time. This morning we headed south to the other “must do” on the list, Zion National Park. I have mixed feelings about this place, the views were good throughout the park, but the set up to get access to the park was kind of ~~messy~~ ~~tacky~~ lacking in clear direction.

There is a visitors centre inside the park where you can park your car and catch a hop-on-hop-off shuttle through the park. Driving your own vehicle through is verboten during May to September. Off course the parking lot fills up by about 0800 so the only parking available is in the local town. This town has thoughtfully set up pay stations so that you can pay $20 to park on any of their designated parking areas. The national parks service then run another shuttle through the town to take visitors to the park entrance. Anyway, having waited for the shuttle for about 10 minutes another group with us at the bus stop realised we were waiting for a shuttle to nowhere, we were at the end of the line and the shuttle did not go into the park, you had to make your own way there!

Once you knew the rules it wasn’t too bad, it was finding the rules that was the problem!!

Once in the park we were lucky and only had to wait a few minutes for the shuttle, shortly after we left the line up was over an hour long, I hate to think what it would be like in peak season. Last piece of negativity, there was a review by a travel consultant recently that suggested tourist are now better off avoiding the big name places and going to the lesser known ones to avoid all the commercialisation. Can’t say I disagree, the scenery at the Capitol Reef park was as good as either Zion or Bryce, in fact the trip back on the I-70 today was stunning.

Rant over!

We left a little earlier than usual as we had a long day ahead of us. Once in the park we took the shuttle up to the far end of the run. Although the scenery was spectacular it became quite clear that Zion was a park more oriented towards the serious hiker. a majority of the walks were in the 5 – 30 mile range, and many of the shorter ones involved steep elevation changes. Any way, we got some exercise as well as taking in the views.

I’ll get all the writing done first then throw a pile of pictures in at the end as I don’t have the time to sort them!!

After our trip around the park we went back to the car and headed off to Kolob Canyon in the Northern part of the park. Again it was well worth the detour to the different formations and views. We climbed up to 8000 ft on this run.

The Virgin River