One of my goals on this trip (yes, this road trip has goals, albeit not set in stone ones) was to visit Zion and Bryce. As noted in a previous post, I had postponed them by a day do to the cold went to Death Valley instead. But now it was time to finally hit them up.

One of the ongoing issues I kept having was the lack of available camping at Zion. It normally has two campgrounds but one is closed for refurbishment. So despite checking daily, I had no lucking securing a campsite. This meant at best I could do a day visit and then hurry over to Zion for a camping site. It was doable but less than ideal.

I was fortunate enough to get a spot at the visitor center. Failure to do so would have required me to backtrack into town and catch the visitor center shuttle into the park. After checking out the visitor center, I boarded the in-park shuttle to go up to the top of the road into Zion Canyon. Once there I did what everyone else did and hiked upstream on the dry path until I hit the water itself and turned around. While the trail does continue, and I’d say is probably worth it, I really didn’t want to deal with wet feet. I then caught the shuttle back down and hopped off at a couple of stops and walked between a few so I could get more hiking in and more pictures. I caught a shuttle back to the visitor center. On the way it stopped by the museum where the bus driver pointed out we had 1 whole minute to catch the museum before it closed. Now I’m going to commit heresy, but I’ll be honest: Zion wasn’t my favorite park so far. I’ll admit to failing to give it a full shot and there are other parts to see, but honestly, while still very pretty and impressive, I’m not sure I’d rush to go back. It also struck me in some ways as one of the more crowded parks. I suspect that’s because probably a very high percentage of the visitors are all crowded into the one main canyon. There are other parts to visit and I intend to someday. Perhaps I’ll enjoy it more.

From there it was time to head east. Now this road is impressive. It has some incredible views and even if you do nothing else in Zion, I’d say this drive is worth it. Included in the drive is passage through a 1 mile long tunnel. My dad would have hated it. He had an irrational fear of tunnels.  By his own admission. I recall our drive across the country when it turned out we had to go through some tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He was white-knuckled.

One detail that makes these tunnels interesting is along the north side are 3 large “windows” in the rock that open up over the valley. You can’t stop to look out, but you do pass them. You may have come across a click-bait article that talks about the “mysterious windows in the rock in Zion Canyon”. Well there’s no mystery. They’re openings into this road tunnel.

Eventually the road opens up into wide open spaces and from there it’s a pretty, but also somewhat non-noteworthy drive into Bryce. Since I got there after hours no one was at the gate to greet me (which is fine because my Park Pass would have covered the entrance fee). I got to my campsite. Well, the slight pull-off from the paved loop that was called my campsite. I literally had to make sure my passenger door wasn’t left open, lest another car come by and sideswipe it. Zion had been cool, in part because of the altitude and slightly the latitude. Bryce, even more so. The Sun was setting behind me as I quickly made dinner and looked to find the restroom. Well the restroom for this loop wasn’t too far away. It was also closed for renovations. I have to admit, I was far from pleased. The next closest was frankly a long walk and two of the times I used it, I actually drove over. I’ll probably complain to the NPS at some point that the website had no warning of this, because had I known, I would have probably picked the other campground that also had free spots. Anyway, it was annoying but that was the sum of it.

Given how cold it already was and it was late, I didn’t relish setting up my tent in the dark so again I bedded down in the car. This time with full long-underwear on. I knew it would be a cold night. Apparently it was. After I got up on the morning, I noticed frost on the inside of my windshield. Yes, inside. The moisture from my breathing was the source of the frost.

And with that, I settled in for a long winter’s nap. Ok, a decent cold spring nap.