October 14, 2022
As it turns out, the information Nancy gleaned yesterday was very helpful. I am not a morning person, much less an early morning person. The advice we got was to get to Zion National Park by 7:30AM. That meant we had to leave by 6:45AM. I grumbled but looking back it was the best thing to do. Zion National Park is a very popular park for tourists. I think more for hikers than anything else. Our route to the park was the Mount Carmel Junction - Zion Scenic Byway. It is Utah State Road 9. It runs over and through the mountains. There are a couple of tunnels along the way and several switchbacks. But the coolest thing was a one mile long tunnel carved through the mountain. Very cool. It even has “windows” carved in the side of the tunnel. Unfortunately you can’t stop to admire the view. Large vehicles and semis, must obtain a permit and traffic is stopped so the oversize vehicle can use both lanes to pass through.
Zion during certain months is a shuttle only park. That means you can only ride in the park on their shuttle. You can hike or ride a bicycle. There are shuttles from Springdale that takes you to the park gate and then you walk into the park or you can drive through the gate to the Visitors Center. We came in through the eastern, not the southern gate, so we parked at the Visitors Center. This early in the morning and it was almost full already. We walked to the shuttle boarding area and immediately Nancy and I thought of Disney World with the chained lines.
Once you board the shuttle you may disembark at a few different stops to hike or view the landscape. We rode the shuttle all the way to Stop 9 which is the turn around point. Everyone must get off the shuttle. However, you could walk across the street and get back on the same bus. We got to Stop 9 and there were several deer mulling around. We just crossed the street and got back on the outbound bus. Our first stop was the Temple of Sinawava. After that we stopped at Big Bend. There we had an opportunity of a lifetime. Some national park volunteers were using a high powered scope to view two California Condors. My little 200mm wasn’t going to cut it for an actual photo but we did get to see them. Very cool!! The nice thing is that the shuttles are about 5 minutes behind each other. Our final stop was the Court of the Patriarchs. We probably stayed there longer than any previous stop. We walked a short distance down toward a water pool. There was a dirt path going one way and you could see a couple of deer snacking on the local foliage. Then in the water were several wild turkeys. Also got to see some flora as well. We walked back up to the bus stop and rode the shuttle back to the Visitors Center. On the shuttle we struck up a conversation with a couple and their son. They were on a bus tour. We got off the bus and continued our conversation. They usually RV and during our talk we all enjoy watching Keep Your Daydream. We took a selfie with them and went our separate ways. It is amazing how friendly RVers are and how they help each other out.
We had a couple of postcards to mail out so we left the park through the southern gate. It put us directly into Springdale. The Post Office was just a few blocks down so we headed there. We did have to wait for someone to allow us to both enter and exit the post office parking lot. Traffic to get into Zion was backed up for at least 2 miles. Wow!! I plotted the route back home. What took us a little over 45 minutes this morning was going to be over 2 hours now. So the alternate route was to head south and then east through Arizona and then back north to Utah. That was only about 1 hour and 15 minutes. In the mountains, you have a limited number of route choices. We arrived back home by mid afternoon. Time for a nap.
