Zion Was a Little Disappointing, But The Dixie National Forest!!

I was excited to check out Zion National Park this morning.  I have heard such wonderful things about it.  I set the GPS to the Visitor Center, and off we went.  Our GPS is set to the fastest way.  Bruce is beginning to think I'm doing this on purpose!  At least this dirt road had recently been graded!

The veiws on the way were outstanding!

When we got there, we learned that the Scenic Drive could only be accessed by shuttle.  No regular vehicles were allowed except by special permit, granted only for specific reasons (such as being an artist in residence or having certain other permits, like Angel's Landing).  I'm getting better, but I'm not in good enough shape to do either of the hikes I would want to do in Zion (The Narrows and Angel's Landing), and Bruce is in worse shape than me now.  We would have liked to see the park where I could take pictures through open windows or get out at the pullouts and scenic views along the way.  But, that's not how the Scenic Drive works in Zion.  You must take a shuttle, and even as early as we got there, the windows were dirty and had terrible reflections from the sunroof windows.  I did the best I could, but some of those reflections and imperfections couldn't be removed.  The shuttle stops weren't even at good viewpoints, only at trailheads.

We finally got back to the Visitor Center and got back in our car.  We did the museum and then exited the park through the Mt. Carmel road (the way I thought we were going to come in to begin with).  This part of the park was much better.  Limited turn outs, but at least I could take pictures through lowered windows where there was good view and no turnout.  The scenery was breathtaking.  I never got a good view in the Scenic Drive.  I also had boring skies and the sun was not always my friend.

There was a park ranger stopping traffic before the tunnel.  We thought it was a one-way tunnel, but when we got there, it was two ways.  There was no park ranger on the other end.  I'm not sure why traffic was stopped on our side.

These natural formations looked like little buildings.

There was a pullout and sign for Checkerboard Mesa.  I didn't think it was one of the better formations, but apparently somebody did.

When we left Zion, we headed toward the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs.  To get there, we had to drive through part of the Dixie National Forest by Duck Creek Village.  I didn't know anything about Dixie National Forest or Duck Creek Village.  There are apparently several peaks above 10,000 feet in the forest.  In this section, we crested at just under that.  It was a beautiful drive!

I loved this sign at one of the pullouts!

We did, indeed, enjoy that view!

It had been a while since I had trudged through a snowy slush!

We stopped for lunch in Cedar City.  I took this picture, but didn't see the sign that said there was a restaurant in there, too.  Boomer's Bloomers and Candy Factory would have been right up our alley, but I didn't see the sign for the restaurant until doing these pictures!  Instead, we ate at the Sizzler.  It was good, but we definitely missed out not eating at Boomer's Bloomers!

The petroglyphs are actually a pull out with no visitor center or any person for assistance.  There is very good signage, though, that you can read if you go.  These petroglyps are some of the better preserved ones that I've seen anywhere except those that have been excavated from their sites and preserved indoors.

The signage explains what the experts think the drawings mean.  Keep in mind that this is just their thoughts.  They could be wrong, but there does appear to be consensus.

If you're in the area, I would highly recommend a drive through the forest and out to see the petroglyphs.  If it's summer, there may be a faster route to Parowan.  We saw a sign, but weren't willing to risk driving on unplowed, snow covered roads.  To get back to Kanab, we had to backtrack over the forest.  I put all the Dixie National Forest pictures together, though some of them were taken on the way back through.  I did like this shot between Cedar City and Parowan.

Back in Kanab, we had balogna sandwiches and hit the sack.  Tomorrow's another big day!

So Much Stuff Packed Into Such a Short Distance!

Today's drive is a whopping 111 miles down the road, but oh! so much stuff to do!  We pulled out of our hotel in Page and headed to the Marble Canyon, where the Navajo Bridge crosses the Colorado River.  The Marble Canyon is along 89A, which will take you to Kanab via the Vermillion Cliffs, past Jacob's Lake (the last place to eat before going to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  There are amazing cookies there!), past the viewpoint for the Grand Staircase from north to south, and into Kanab, Utah.  We had driven 89A from Kanab to the western end of the Vermillion  Cliffs.  We had not driven 89, which runs from Glen Canyon to Kanab, through Utah, but I still wanted to see a couple of sites on the eastern side of 89A, so we did some backtracking.  We passed Horseshoe Bend, starting with the Navajo Bridge and Marble Canyon.

The scenery is amazing.  I just love when we would pop out of an area where the canyon walls closed in and the scenery changes as you get through it!

The Vermillion Cliffs are some of my favorites!  Again, pardon the blurry foreground.  We were driving, and pull-outs aren't always at the best sites!

Lee's Ferry was the only place to cross from Arizona to Utah in the area in the very early days.  With the invention and popularization of automobiles (and the sinking of the ferry), the Grand Canyon Bridge was built just a few miles down from Lee's Ferry, opening to traffic in 1929.  A few years later, the name was changed to the Navajo Bridge.  As cars and trucks became heavier, this bridge was deemed to not be sturdy enough to handle the demands on it, so a new, stronger bridge was built in 1995, and the old bridge was converted to a pedestrian bridge.  The bridges span the Marble Canyon in the area of the Vermillion Cliffs.  

Marble Canyon is often considered the beginning of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and people often raft the Colorado River, through the Marble Canyon, to the Grand Canyon.  I would love to do that sometime, but I hear there are some rapids, and I'm not really confident in my ability to white water raft at this time.

We decided that I would walk across the pedestrian bridge, and Bruce would drive across and meet me on the other side.  If you look closely, you can see Big Red (our red Mitsubishi Outlander Sport) crossing the Navajo Bridge.

Soon after Bruce got to the western parking lot, I saw this California Condor perched on one of the trusses under the bridge.  I got a few pix and decided to go get The Baby (the 150-600 lens) out of the car to get better shots.

It was about this time that I realized I did not have time to get another camera!

Most of my shots were of the condor going away, but I did get a few good ones of him flying toward me!

Since I had a good view of his tag, I decided to look this guy up.  The California Condor was almost extinct.  In 1987, there were only 22 birds left in the wild, and they were all captured to start a breeding program.  That program was a success, and the population has been growing since then.  This particular bird was hatched on May 10, 2017, in the Oregon Zoo as part of that breeding program.  He was released in the Arizona/Utah area at some point after becoming an adult.  The wild population is now estimated to be around 561.  Our first stop, and my day is already made!

Our next stop was Horseshoe Bend.  The site is located on public lands in the Glen Canyons Recreation Area, but the parking lot and beginning of the trail to the site is on property belonging to the City of Page.  The city now charges $10 per car to park and use their portion of the trail.  According to my watch, the hike down from where we parked and back was just over 3 miles, but I thought it was worth it!

The view coming from Navajo Bridge to Horseshoe Bend.

A boat docked on the island in the center of the bend

Horseshoe Bend

On the east side of Page, we stopped for a quick shot of the bridge over the Glen Canyon Dam.  Please ignore the yellow reflection on the lower left corner.  I shot this one through the windshield instead of an open window!

After crossing the bridge, I wanted a picture of the lake from a vantage point in Glen Canyon Recreational Area.  Once we got in, the map showed that we could just drive through the Recreational Area and hook up with Hwy 89 long before the Toadstool Trail, which was our next stop.

This is the dam from just before bridge.

The Waheep area of Lake Powell has a marina.

The scenery past Glen Canyon toward the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument (on the southeast side) was still amazing!

Along Hwy 89, in the area of the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument, is the Toadstools Trailhead.  I wanted to hike this trail.  It's listed as an easy hike of just under two miles round trip, in and out.  They say it has a total gain of 100 feet.  They don't tell you that you have to gain that 100 feet multiple times!  It was a beautiful trail, but all the up and down was hard on me!

This is an early view of a small hoodoo on the top of a cliff.  This may become a toadstool later or it may fall off before then.

A group of toadstools on a distant cliff.  I did not reach these, and I don't believe others on the trail did, either.  In fact, it seemed like some of them didn't even notice they were there.

A beautiful flower that I had the energy to stoop down to photograph.  This was taken on the way in.  I thought about taking another on the way out, but didn't have the spoons to stoop down again!

A view of the trail (pay no attention to the wash bed - it wasn't the trail).  If you look closely, there are 4 people on that ledge that I haven't made it to yet.  They have stopped and taken lots of pictures, but they didn't take pictures of the earlier toadstools.  I don't think they saw them.

The ledge those people were on once I got up there.

This is the primary toadstool formation.  Some of them have fallen.

The toadstool formation to the right.  I just zoomed and cropped into this shot.  I didn't go down the canyon and back up to that platform for those formations.

A natural, heart-shaped cutout in the distant cliff beside the closer toadstool formation

A wider angle shot of the first set of toadstools.  The canyon was beautiful even if you didn't notice the toadstools on top.  This was taken on my way back, when I needed to stop to breathe, and point the formation out to a couple on their way in.

This was taken when we were almost in Kanab.  I just liked the rusty water tower against the red sandstone cliff.

We got into Kanab and I crashed for the night.  The hikes kicked my butt, but they were worth every bit of it!  We had eaten left-over pizza for lunch, so I just made balogna sandwiches in the room before I died!

Upper Antelope Slot Canyon

We only had one activity today, and it didn't start till the afternoon, so we decided it would be a good day to do laundry.  I guess there aren't many home washing machines in this part of the country either (We still haven't found a drive-through car wash!) because there's a laundrymat on every corner and they were PACKED!  We were lucky to find a machine for our little small load of clothes!  But, we did, and now we have enough clean underwear for the rest of the trip!  Yay us!

After a short rest from such strenuous activity (lol), we headed to our tour company to catch our bus to Upper Antelope Canyon.  I'm disappointed in my pictures.  After some bad actors did some bad things with tripods, monopods, selfie sticks, etc. (such as hitting guides with them), there are no longer photo tours and tripods, monopods, selfie sticks, or other stabilizing posts are no longer allowed into the canyons.  The lighting wasn't as good in the upper canyon as I remember it being in the lower canyon.  Granted, it has been several years since I was in the lower canyon, and if memory serves, we were there at midday instead of mid afternoon.  My camera hated it, and in many of my shots, the shadows are clipped, leaving green blotches, and I don't know how to fix that - yet.  I plan to learn, but it may take a while.  I'm sharing the shots that were salvageable.  I don't think any of them would be suitable for blowing up, though.  It was still a nice tour, and even though my pictures are a bust, it's a beautiful slot canyon.  As I learn more, I'll just have to come back and do more slot canyons to try to get better shots!

If you come to this area, don't be confused if your watch keeps changing time as you ping on different cell towers.  The State of Arizona doesn't do Daylight Savings Time, but the Navajo Nation does.  So New Mexico, the Navajo Nation, and Utah are all on the same time, but you have to pop in and out of Arizona and New Mexico from Four Corners until you actually go into Utah.  At times, you may think your watch is possessed!

This is our guide.  In the background is the entrance to the upper canyon.

These "popcorn" areas are formed when the sandstone forms around small debris that ultimately breaks loose.  Eventually, the "popcorn" edges will erode off, the walls will smooth out, and the wind and water will ultimately turn it back to sand.

This formation is called "Beauty and the Beast"  the formation in the foreground looks like a canine-type animal, and the formation in the background looks like the lower part of a face with hair flowing behind.

This formation is called "Lumiere" because it looks like a candle and flame.

This is called the "butterfly" because of the shape of the purples and the shadows.

A shot of the moon through an opening of the canyon walls.

After the canyon, we had dinner at the Dam Bar (because it's close to the Lake Powel dam).  The food was excellent and, in fact, warm! 

Tomorrow is a busy day!