Current Location: Page, AZ, N 36 55.186', W 111 27.784', elev. 4238 ft.

Wednesday was just a travel day as I made my way across southern Utah. I drove west on I-70 from Green River until I reached I-15, which I took south, all the way down to the very southern part of the state, where I picked up Utah 9. I drove east briefly on Utah 9 reaching a town inexplicably named Hurricane (N 37 10.628', W 113 17.608', elev. 3273 ft.) where I stopped for the night. I'm pretty sure a hurricane has never passed through Utah. When I was in northern Utah, I wrote that the state felt like a different country. Well, southern Utah may as well be a different planet. It was like I was driving on Mars; all you see the whole way across is canyons, rocks, sand, mountains, and very few other vehicles. I've driven on the planet Mars and I had this one stretch of about 200 miles where I only saw one other vehicle, but that story is for a different journal entry.

Thursday, I woke up and drove east to Zion National Park, just a short distance from Hurricane. Zion, and most of the landmarks inside were named by the Mormon explorers. From what I had read regarding the park, it is one of the most popular and beautiful of all the parks, and that it's canyon floor is compared to that of Yosemite valley, only more colorful, so going in, I had high expectations. One thing that concerned me going into the park: due to the overwhelming popularity, a mandatory shuttle bus was implemented in 1999 for most of the highlights to visit in the park. Getting into the park, I could see why the shuttle bus was necessary as the park was very crowded and had only one main road through the canyon. I found it very tough to park at the visitors center, where there were over 500 parking spots. They closed off the visitor center parking shortly after I parked, so I lucked out. I think if I were to spend a whole day exploring the park, the shuttle bus would have been great, I could take it to the hiking spots, or off to the mountain stream to swim. But for someone like me, I am sort of just cruising through the national parks, not stopping for very long at any of the landmarks, mostly just enough to take pictures and take in the scenery. A shuttle bus makes this incredibly difficult, since you can't take very good photos through the windows of a moving bus. Additionally, there were about 8 stops along the 7 miles of canyon road, but getting off at a stop meant having to wait upwards of 25 minutes for the next shuttle bus. This is perfect for hikers but very difficult if I am only taking a few moments for photos, so I only got off the bus in a few spots. Additionally, the summer months meant huge construction projects in the park, particularly the roads, delaying the shuttles even more as they had to wait for permission to drive past certain points and/or wait for pilot cars to guide them. At one point I was on the shuttle bus, and everyone on the bus besides myself was European, but they weren't all together. If not for the desert canyon scenery, I very well could have been on a bus in Rome. I heard French, Spanish, German, Polish, possibly Greek, and the most common was Italian.

Unfortunately, I had high expectations for Zion, and it was my first and hopefully only bad time in a national park, it just wasn't all that fun for the usual activities I do in the parks, and I spent a tremendous amount of time just sitting around waiting for the shuttle as opposed to traveling.

Here are a few pictures:



This photo is from inside the shuttle bus, where you could see a sign above the driver's head which read Your Operator Is: <name>. This particular driver was named Bent, making the sign a little comical.



The rest of the photos can be viewed here, though I didn't take too many. I exited the park continuing east on Utah 9, then north on US 89 to east on Utah 12 where I reached Bryce Canyon National Park. I arrived about an hour and a half to two hours before sunset, so I had plenty of time to explore the park and take a few photos and wait around for sunset. At the visitor's center, I learned that Bryce (N 37 28.519', W 112 14.413', elev. 9110 ft.) is not actually a canyon, but a mesa. There are formations along the "canyon" floor called hoodoos, they look like pillars and chimneys and are very spectacular.



Visibility in the park is incredible, from some points you can see the Grand Canyon area, over 100 miles distant. Due to the elevation and the wind directions, Bryce has some of the cleanest air in the lower 48 states, as almost no outside pollution winds up in the park.





Finally, it was time for the sunset, and the incredible views became even more incredible.



You can view the rest of the photos here. Leaving the park, I came across some deer, but I have seen so many on the trip, I don't even bother stopping for photos anymore. I headed back out to US 89 and headed south, intending to get to Fredonia, Arizona to stop for the night. I got to the border town of Kanab, UT, and continued driving on US 89, when it turned east in town. I wanted to get to Arizona because I would gain an hour as they don't observe Daylight Saving Time. Kanab is relatively close to Arizona and at this point I started to look at my cell phone, because it should have changed times as I passed into Arizona. I was driving for quite a while after passing Kanab, and I was wondering why I wasn't getting to Fredonia yet, because it hadn't seemed that far on the atlas. After about 40 minutes of nothing but road, no other vehicles I was wondering just exactly what was going on, since I hadn't arrived in Fredonia yet, and my cell phone time hadn't changed. It was eerie, and something made me feel like I had traveled back in time to before the invention of cars. So I looked at my atlas and realized in Kanab, US 89 breaks off into US 89A on its way to Fredonia, and I was traveling east, still in Utah. I sat for a minute and thought before deciding to turn around and head back to Kanab to catch 89A. After about two minutes I looked at my atlas again and realized I was much closer to Page, AZ that I was to Fredonia, AZ, so I hemmed and hawed and decided to turn around again. I was real tired and it felt real dangerous to be on that road at night, so I jut wanted to get off as quick as possible, even though heading to Page would make my trip to the Grand Canyon the next day longer.