Day 6 - Zion National Park - Utah
Trip Start
Oct 13, 2012
1
6
38
Trip End
Nov 19, 2012
Hurricane, Utah
Thursday, October 18, 2012
I have now seen two American examples of what passes for a farmer's market over here. The first was at the MGM in Vegas who listed McDonalds, Newmann's hotdogs, a pizza shop and an ice cream shop under the heading "farmer's market" on their map. So desperate for fruit I paid the ice cream shop $9 for a fruit cup minus the ice-cream. Worth every penny. The second time I saw it was at a supermarket in Utah. This time it came closer to fruit and veg, in the refrigerator cabinet under the sign "farmer's market" there was pre-packaged diced cheese, bags of grated carrot and bags of what I think was lettuce, along with a bucket load of other processed goods, not exactly the Collingwood children's farm. I got my hopes up passing an apple orchard in Springdale (little village outside Zion National Park). The sign said "fruit company" and there was another sign on the shop saying "apples", yippee, and apples aren't even my favourites! I went inside and found a whole row of lovely little fruit baskets, and what did they contain? Fresh apples? No, they were filled with freeze dried sugar filled fruit and trail mix, are you kidding me?!? I did about 6 laps of the shop before I finally found two sad and lonely little apples, one bruised beyond repair, I bought the other one, delicious! Best savour it, goodness knows when I'll find another one :)
Alright enough about food, now it's time to talk Zion.
Zion National Park is in the south-west corner of Utah and is filled with gorgeous sandstone cliffs and canyons. At the Grand Canyon you visit from the top of the Canyon, but in Zion you enter at the canyon floor. As the elevation is lower even though it's autumn over here and supposedly starting to get cold it was a beautiful sunny and warm day, perfect for that spot of rock climbing I was doing in the first photo you'll see here ;)
As if! As some of you are aware I can't even make it down a set of stairs without holding on for dear life, so I'm afraid the rock climbing was out for me. There was also one walk called Angel's Landing sooooo steep that it has unfortunately seen 6 fatalities occur over the years. I would have loved to follow in Don's path and do some great hikes, but I' afraid I'm too much of a scaredy cat and stuck to the flat tracks around the shuttle stops and the paths linking the shuttle stops instead. But thanks for the tips about the parks anyway Don, Zion was beautiful and so wonderfully laid out with shuttle buses, water refill stations, seats and shading, and a visitor's centre. Couldn't ask for anything more.
It was a bit of a hair-raising experience leaving the park as it was one twist and turn after the other coupled with a tunnel through one of the cliffs nearly 2km long that is completely dark and contained bends. The drive also increases in elevation as it goes. It is 3920ft (1195m) at the base of the canyon and 5700ft (1737m) at the end of the totally terrifying drive. It was the Clyde mountain x 1,000,000,000 with a complete lack of gaurd rails (for those that don't know it - that would be most of you - the Clyde's a v tricky mountain in NSW). The scenery along the way was stunning, including condors soaring overhead between the cliffs, but it was too scary to stop along the way to photograph it, I was a bit worried that if I stopped I might lose momentum to keep going. My photos therefore do not do the whole park justice, but they are a good representation of what you can see from the canyon floor, I think they're beautiful, I hope you do too :)
Comments
Hey Gorgeous, love the blog - you should go into travel writing! Sounds like such a wonderful time thansk for putting the time and effort into such a great blog! Enjoy and miss you and can't wait to to see more
Tracey, I agree with Jane's comment above that you have a flair for travel writing and a good eye for photography. As long as you avoid the Himalayas and stick to flat lands with guard rails, you've got serious potential.
Hey Tracey. You have some splendid photos - well done. I recognize lots of
these. Pity you were a bit afraid to rise above the canyon floor - if I'd been there I
might have dragged you up a ways. Never mind. Your weather looks like it was
great for the first few days.