Pam took the first leg of the driving on towards Zion (her first time driving the highways with the trailer). As it turned out (and if we had only known), this was not the best leg to take as a primer. We immmediately crossed over into Arizona and then proceeded into the Virgin River Canyon. The good news was David got a chance to really study the canyons and the beautiful scenery during the drive. The bad news was Pam had to fight winding roads and strong winds. The scenery was truly spectactular. Pam took us over the border into Utah and we stopped at the Welcome Center. We probably should have had lunch at this point, but instead we continued on.
After a wonderful warm and pleasant stay inside at a Holiday Inn, what do you think is a great transition? How about tent-trailering at 27 degrees Fahrenheit (overnight) next to Zion National Park? Well, the kids weren't exactly overjoyed with the prospect ("I'm staying in the car the whole time") but it was an absolutely beautiful location. Besides, we needed to winterize the tent trailer, after all we were heading into the Rockies to stay at a resort and the night-time temperatures are in the teens there.
We arrived into the campground just before 3 PM our time (it was actually almost 4 PM Utah time). And here we are:
In fact, by the time we ate lunch (we didn't have any on the way) it was about 4:45! Since there was still a lot of daylight left (daylight savings time now) we decided to head into Zion National Park. The campground (a private one) was only a few hundred metres from the entrance to the park. We drove by an IMAX movie theatre on the way in and hoped that we would get a chance to stop by that evening on the way back to the campsite.
The park was very neat. We were surrounded by huge tall rock cliffs. We drove a really interesting road through the canyon, stopping along the way to take pictures. For example:
At one spot, Weeping Rock, we did a hike up to a huge rock face that was leeking water right out of the side of the rocks. Apparently, the sandstone layers in the rock leek water, and the shale layers don't so you get an effect whereby the water seeps into the top of mountain and travels along a stratified sandstone layer. These layers are at angles, so they come out partway down the sheer rock face. On the way there and back to the Weeping Rock we were surrounded by springs and neat spring flowers and plants. It was a great hike.
We drove to the end of the road and a saw a really high (narrow) waterfall. This was at the Temple of Sinawava. I took a video of the waterfall and HL, James, and Dan (Reba and Pam had decided to go walking farther along the path). Heather Lynn made a mini-snowperson on the fence and I filmed that as well. There was about four inches of new snow on the ground (had fallen the night before and that morning).
Next we headed back out of the park to see if we could catch the IMAX. We had to stop at a section of the road that had washed out and was under repair so it looked like it was getting very tense if we would make it back in time for the 8:00 PM show. We arrived at 7:59 and Pam ran up to see if we could still get in. As it turned out we got a discount on a double-feature and headed in to Everest, which was then followed by the Zion IMAX movie. We had a little snack in between shows, since we had not had dinner. The movies were great. Pam and Heather Lynn had already seen Everest, but the rest of us hadn't. It was really neat. The Zion movie was pretty good, too.
After the movies we headed back to the campground. It was getting really cold by this time. We made dinner, which helped heat up the inside of the trailer. We ate dinner just before 11 PM. That night was very cold. We actually closed up one end of the trailer and pointed the ceramic heater from that end towards the other to keep us warm. Heather Lynn slept by herself, Pam was with Reba on the pseudo-double bed, and the males were all on the end. James had the privilege of freezing the most on the far outside end. Poor guy, he fell asleep first so was in the coldest spot. The rest of us did not get to sleep until after midnight.
The next morning we got up and was it ever cold outside. The inside temperature was in the high 40's, which was OK, but the outside temperature was another 20 degrees colder. The canyon was wonderful in the morning. Even though it was well past dawn, the sun did not 'rise' above the mountain until after 8:30. We packed up. This time was the most interesting one because we had to winterize the water lines. The little tube that came with the trailer to bypass the hot water tank leaked badly. I just didn't use it (bypassed it directly with a hose and clamps) and it worked fine. We did head up through the national park on the way out, through the tunnel and then to the east side of the park. The mountains were a bit different. There were even very scerated rocks:
Well, it's time to roll and head on towards Bryce Canyon!