Day 9: Thursday 9th September
Bye-bye Arizona; Hello Utah!
morning over Lake Powell
Inside the Wahweap Lodge reception area, there is a sign. If you stand on one side, you are in Arizona - if on the other; Utah - so, unsurprisingly, we were very soon leaving Arizona and driving along the roads of Utah! We had hoped to take Hwy 89a to Kanab, but, paying attention to the weather forecast and to the dark clouds in the distance, we decided to take the more straightforward (and less mountainy?) route and continue along Hwy 89.
storms everywhere!
It wasn't disappointing! The Vermilion Cliffs were stupendous! And the town of Kanab itself, was most charming.
white picket fence, Kanab
But those storm clouds were gathering even closer - and they were multiplying! What's more, there was plenty of lightning flashing through them! We stopped at a rest area (Glendale), where there was a display, describing this route (Heritage Highway), which was taken by Brigham Young and where the first Mormon settlers took root.
Then we were driving past Bryce Canyon cliffs themselves. It was very dark above those cliffs.
Sure enough, on entering the park, the heavens opened! We parked at Sunset Point and had a quick peek down over the (quite glorious) hoodoos, when the thunder started. There was a sign, "During lightning storms, stay in your car". Sounded a sensible thing to do - and we wondered why there were people sitting eating their lunch, under the trees?? We made further stops at Inspiration Point and at Bryce Point (particularly harrowing, as a lightning bolt flashed straight past us!), took a few quick snaps - but got drenched in the process!
(click for bigger photos)
We then had a look around the Visitor Center and, as we exited the park, the rain stopped!! We made a stop at Ruby's Inn and bought hotdogs (ICK!) and then looked around the shops opposite. These were mainly ROCK shops, but I was very good and didn't buy anything! The hub got petrol and announced that there was a kid in there, straight out of the film, "Deliverence"!! There were some stables here and the horses looked very unhappy that nobody appeared to want to ride them - but, no doubt once the sun came out again, they would, once more, be galloping down amongst the hoodoos - and how I wished I could join them.
But, for us, it was time to retrace our route back to Mt Carmel Junction, before turning off towards Zion National Park, along the Mt Carmel-Zion Highway.
rural scene near Zion (by the buffalo paddocks)
Click the above 2 pictures for monstrous-sized
WOW! I hadn't expected anything near as beautiful as this road turned out to be. It was quite astonishingly beautiful - with the high Zion cliffs closing in on us on all sides. We went through a mile-long tunnel and from then on, the road switched back on itself many times, until we entered Springdale. I wished, fervently, that we could have stayed and set up home there!
Our hotel in Springdale, the Desert Pearl Inn, was exactly as most people had described it on the TripAdvisor reviews. A huge room, with a patio leading to a lawn leading down to the Virgin River.
After a brief rest, it was time to eat. Nobody was all that hungry, so we decided to drive the short distance into Springdale and to get something to take back to our room (so that we could spend more time sitting on our patio listening to the silence; apart from the gurgling of the river). Firstly, we looked around a sourvenir shop and Paul bought himself a 'red dirt' T-shirt. Then it started to rain heavily and lightning, once more, streaked the sky. We ran into the deli and bought ice-creams! We also ordered sandwiches and were long past finishing our ices, before the (rather slow) girl had finished making them. But they were well worth the wait - absolutely DELICIOUS. And we were very taken with how relaxed the whole place was.
Of all the places we visited on our trip, I think that Zion was the one which most surprised me. I really hadn't expected it to be quite so beautiful.
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[ Introduction ]
[ Day 1 ]
[ Day 2 ]
[ Day 3 ]
[ Day 4 ]
[ Day 5 ]
[ Day 6 ]
[ Day 7 ]
[ Day 8 ]
[ Day 10 ]
[ Day 11 ]
[ Day 12 ]
[ Day 13 ]
[ Day 14 ]
[ Day 15 ]
[ Day 16 ]
[ Day 17 ]
[ Days 18, 19 and 20 ]
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