Road Trip: Southwest

Day 8: Tuesday, April 29, 2025 - Zion Canyon NP, UT

Day's statistics:
Weather: mid 70s
Steps: Steve 9,625; Linda 7,304
Travel: 241 miles

Breakfast was a full buffet including eggs and sausage.

Today we were driving to another NP. As was the habit this trip, we once again stopped to get gas.
I saw the gas sign from down the road a bit, and said we'll stop there.
We pulled into the station - that also happened to have a McDonald's attached - I got out to fill-up, and noticed that the pump price was not what I saw on the sign from down the road. That's when I noticed that the sign I saw was for the station across the street.

I got back in and we pulled into a spot across the street.
After filling up, we headed to Fremont Street, an area Pam told us was the "old city", an area stuck in time. We drove north - the direction we had to go anyway. After putting the address into the GPS, we moved on, taking a path that brought us to a Las Vegas landmark known as "The Sphere". After perusing some images online, we knew that it would be visible during the day. Or morning, as the case may be. It was pretty neat as it displays ever changing images and video on the outside.
Here are some shots of the sphere video (the video was clearer than what the pictures may indicate).





A 1:20 minute clip showing The Sphere in action.

After The Sphere, on the way to Fremont Street, we came across the Palazzo Mall, another high-end mall that I had read about. Supposedly seeing the inside was worth it. But we had other plans...

A few more miles up the road we arrived at Fremont Street.













It was time to leave Vegas and head to the next destination.
And on the way out of the city, we saw the last few sights.

After an hour, the "Welcome To Arizona" sign was not only unexpected - as we had to go through the upper northwest corner of the state rather than straight into Utah - it was nonexistant per the GPS telling us "welcome to Arizona". So we did the next best thing and got this Centennial sign instead.

Further on, we drove through a canyon like area in Littlefield.








Eventaully we crossed into Utah.

And a couple more sights further on.

We stopped in Davis Food and Drug store in La Verkin to find something for lunch as we knew that this was, well, the last stop before the park. We found a turkey sandwich with Fritos® and a chocolate chip cookie, and we got a small container of potato salad. The deli area had other hot foods available too, along with napkins and utensils, and tables for eating.

Once again the park is off the beaten path - and we still had a twenty mile drive to get to the park.









As we got closer to Zion NP, arriving fron the south, we saw signs in Springdale that said the VC lot was full, and "Park Here and use the Free Shuttle". We spoke to the gatekeeper ranger about the parking and she told us about the situation. We took our chances with trying to park in the VC lot.
While this was actually taken while leaving, it is provided here for continuity as we usually get it on the way into a park, not out.


Our gamble paid off as there was a spot in the second row of looking. We parked, gathered our things, and headed to the VC.
We spoke to a ranger about the park, he gave us a map and explained how the park's shuttles (within the park, not the parking lot shuttles) work. They run five stops up / into the park, and eight stops down / out of the park.
The ranger said to make sure we're on one of the returning shuttles beccause missing the last shuttle at 6:15 PM means that we'd have to hike the 45 minutes (or more) back to the VC. We visited the gift shop, and got our stamp, the 4^th NP stamp on this trip.

There weren't too many on line to get on the shuttle, and we were far enough up that we fit on the next one. While we were walking up, we spent a few minutes talking to a young couple about NPs and travel in general.
There were some great sights from the VC and the ride up.
Zion Canyon is comparatively narrow. The begining was not as deep, and not as wide. But as we got futher up / in, the... walls started closing in.





We began to hike down the path toward Temple of Sinawava, the last stop on the shuttle. Some of the pictures above were taken after we initially got off the shuttle, including this one.

What I didn't see at the exact time of taking the picture, was the rock climber. I actually overheard some people talking, and turned to look - and that's when I saw him.
I took the same picture as above, but zoomed in with the lens (as opposed using the Affinity® software) and took the left half of the picture, then used Affinity® to zoom in on the right half.

The path we were taking ultimately led to the Temple of Sinawava. However, to get all the way to the Temple, it required waders and special poles for balance on the rocks. We were going that far. But we proceeded for as far as we reasonably could, and as far as we could handle.
This pathway ran parallel to the Virgin River.




We took a selfie in this area too.

As Linda took a brief rest sitting on a wall, a squirrel crept a little close. It - and others in the park along this path - must be so comfortable around people.




And we trekked on, though Linda stopped a hundred yards or so sooner than I did - but when I asked someone how much further it was and they pointed "all the way over there", I chose to stop and go back myself.







We returned to the shuttle, and headed down park. The next stop was at Big Bend. We debussed, and viewed the area. Essentially it was a "big bend" in the river. And the stone.

The next stop we debussed at was the Court of the Patriarchs.
There was a viewpoint up the hill a little - another one-hundred or so yards up - that I hiked up to to get a slightly better vantage point. There happened to be a placard up there as well, naming the four major peaks of the formation (though there could be five) of, from left to right: Abraham Peak, Isaac Peak, Mount Moroni, and Jacob Peak. And Linda stayed below and got her own pictures.





I also took a couple other pictures, including behind and near the viewpoint.


We boarded the next shuttle and headed back to the VC. There wasn't too much to see along the way, and I wasn't quick enough on the shutter to get a picture of the deer we passed by, but not of the water or this peak.


By the time the shuttle returned us to the VC, it was already closed.
We used the restrooms, then headed out. But we headed further into the park as the road we needed to travel to the east started in the park (yes, we could have driven all the way around, but it was better to take this route).
This route, however, took us into the canyon mountain providing some duplicate views but from a different perspective.
(Yes, some of these were taken by me. First, sometimes we're not moving, and if we are I don't take my eyes off the road. Second, I usually take three to six photos [on our phones, double-tapping the power button turns on the camera and pressing the volume down operates the shutter, so that's handy too] moving the camera a little to change perspective because I can't see what I'm doing, and then use the best image I can, sometimes not even getting a good photo to even use.)









Eventually we passed through the Mount Carmel Tunnel.


We had heard (or read) that there was a nice viewpoint called "Canyon Overlook" not far from the other side of the tunnel. It was literally right at the exit of the tunnel. We thought it was "not far" meaning that there would have been some travel.
A little further on was another shorter tunnel too.









A landscape pan of this park is included in this video

We left the park and the mountain area and hit more flat lands for a bit - even seeing some bison (or maybe they were buffalo [they ARE different]), before seeing some more mountains.

It was over an hour to get to Hatch Station.
We did finally arrive at our destination, .

We went inside to check in.
For the first time in decades, the hotel / motel didn't have our reservation (the last time this happened was due to a first name / last name issue, but that was essentially before the internet). I confirmed the reservation and the reservation number, but still no luck. Fortunately, they had availability, and it was a bigger room and cost a whopping $4.00 (four dollars) more than our original reservation.
After booking, we talked about dinner. The order is placed at the same counter as the hotel reservation - the other half of the building is a small store - and the food is brought to the table.
We reviewed the menu, and ordered.

Linda had the veggie burger with sweet potato fries (which is a little blurry for some reason), and I had the BBQ pulled pork with fries.


The food was pretty good, but it was actually a little more than we should have had this late as it was already after 7:00. We did a decent amount of hiking earlier in the day, but we still should have had a little less to eat.

After the meal, we made our way to the room.
A moron parked so poorly in the corner that they took up two spaces. I made do, we unloaded the luggage, and headed to the room. Incidentally, the key was attached to a horseshoe.
There were two queen beds, a twin, and a sofa - it could have slept six.

We did the luggage thing, relaxed a bit watching TV, and eventually went to bed.

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