J and D's Travel Blog » Utah

Day 4: Zion National Park, Utah

jamie — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:30:57 +0000

We had a fantastic day today touring Zion National Park and the surrounding area in southern Utah. We were woken this morning around 6:30AM by an extremely loud noise – it sounded like an explosion and the entire room shook for at least 10 seconds. It turns out it was just thunder, the likes of which we’ve never heard before. We were disappointed to find it was raining heavily when we got up and thought our day of sightseeing was ruined. Thankfully while we were getting breakfast the rain slowed and on the 1.5 hour drive to Zion National Park the rain stopped altogether and the sun came out with a beautiful blue sky. It was a fantastic day from that point forward.

Zion National Park is indescribable in its beauty. The entire area is composed of sandstone and the unique geology of the region makes for some breathtaking landscapes. With all the natural beauty, we couldn’t resist taking literally several hundred photos and narrowing down the photos to share with you this evening was quite a task – there are more than normal but we couldn’t resist! I’m not sure these photos can entirely do the park justice, but I hope they can convey some of the natural beauty we saw today.

I have to say, when I thought of these types of landscapes in the past, I would have thought of Arizona, never Utah. I had no idea how beautiful Utah is and of how much there is to see and do – there are many, many National Parks in southern Utah, I only wish we had time to see more of them. I think there will be a return visit sometime in the future!

BTW – we really appreciate receiving all your comments on posts, even if we don’t have the time to respond to each individually (our Internet access is limited each day). We do read and appreciate each one – please keep them coming!

Driving down Utah highway 89 South to Zion National Park

Panoramic vista just outside the park entrance. Click to view the larger version!

Us at Zion National Park Entrance!

Typical example of the scenery inside Zion National Park

These mountain cliffs form the walls of a very, very deep canyon which you drive down into on your way into the park.

One of many beautiful views in Zion Canyon inside the park

Me in a tree! We were hiking and I couldn't find an unobstructed view (from other trees) of the landscape so I had to climb up to get it!

Beautiful yellow tree in the park - click through to view a larger version.

Autumn in Zion Canyon

Dominique checking out the river in Zion Canyon

Beautiful fall foliage in Zion National Park

Interesting cacti in a beautiful landscape

Zion Canyon Walls illuminated at Sunset

Day 4: Heading to Zion National Park

JandD — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:00:06 +0000

After doing some research last night, we realized we were a bit optimistic with our sight-seeing plans. First of all, each of the national parks charge a $25 entrance fee, so making a quick trip to 3-4 parks in 1-2 days is just not affordable or sensible. Finally, not all the sights we hoped to see (Antelope Canyon in particular) are open this time of year. Also, they require more time than we realized to see the sights. It really makes more sense to pick a single park and see it properly than park hopping as we had originally planned. Our plan now is to head to Zion National Park today and spend the entire day there, then stop in Hurricane, UT for the night. This is the route:

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Salt Lake & Utah Photos (Day 3)

jamie — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:50:38 +0000

As we were late getting into Salt Lake City last night, we didn’t see much of anything as we drove in. Before heading south today, we backtracked a few miles and visited the Great Salt Lake, accessible just on the outskirts of the city. The scenery was quite striking however we did discover one thing – the lake smells really really bad!! The lake has a very high concentration of salt (even more than the Red Sea on one end) and other minerals – apparently that includes sulfur. The entire area smelled like rotten eggs – not pleasant. We were surprised to find a lovely little boat marina on the lake shore, where we stopped to take a few of these photos.

Great Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Utah

Fremont Island on Great Salt Lake

Great Salt Lake Shoreline, Salt Lake City

Great Salt Lake Marina

Leaving Salt Lake - Mountains Surrounding the City

Snow-capped peaks outside Salt Lake City

Utah Highway Landscape

Arrived in Salt Lake City

JandD — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 08:28:42 +0000

After a lengthy drive through the Nevada and Utah desert, we arrived safe and sound in Salt Lake City. The drive through the mountains this time of year was beautiful as the leaves on many trees are turning bright yellow. It was well past dark as we pulled in to Salt Lake City, so we didn’t see much – we’ll have a look around in the morning.

The weather so far on our trip has been fairly good, when we left California it was uncharacteristically cloudy but warm (about 75 degrees). The drive up to Reno passed through some cooler areas but held steady in the high 60s with slightly cloudy skies. Today we passed through some light rain in a few areas (the first time we’ve seen rain in months!!) but overall the weather was very good and warm. We did get our first glimpse of snow today – thankfully it was high up on the mountain tops of Nevada at least 5000 feet above us!! It will be very interesting to see the weather change as we move further east in the coming week.

Most of our travel today was high above sea level – 4000 to 5000 ft in most cases. We also crossed our first timezone – we are now on Mountain time (GMT-0700), 3.5 hours behind Newfoundland meaning we lost a hours sleep!! Funny enough we “gain” it back tomorrow when the clocks get change for daylight savings – something we’re looking forward to as the sun currently sets very early in the evening (no later than 6pm) which is bad when you have a long drive.

Tomorrow we’re heading to southern Utah and hoping to visit some of the parks in the area such as Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park and perhaps a few more over the next day or two. There should be many opportunities to take pictures, so come back for a look. Good night!