Thanksgiving Road Trip, Part III: Zion National Park (1/2)

Read Part II here

The drive from Horseshoe Bend to Zion National Park is a pretty one that passes through alien rockscapes and cute little towns. Our weather alternated between heavy overcast, drizzling rain and snow flurries.

We crossed the border from Arizona into Utah a little after 11 am, and arrived at the East Entrance of Zion National park just before 1 pm. (Please ignore the nice windshield crack.)

I keep using the word “phenomenal” to describe the scenery on this road trip, and it keeps being the right word. I just wish I’d had a better camera to do it justice.

The texture of these rock structures reminded me of Mexican pan dulce:

Just a boy and his adventuremobile.

We pulled off the road at a random trailhead to stretch our legs with some rock climbing. That turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip. The high-desert terrain made us feel at home.

The views were great.

Got back on the road and continued on through the park.

We stopped for one more short explore, but the weather wasn’t right for creekbed hikes. We resolved to revisit this park in a warmer season.

The scenic drive down Zion Canyon Road was closed to cars for the season and only accessible by shuttle bus. So we drove to the museum, but this end of the park was crowded and we couldn’t find a parking spot. We continued on to the Visitor Center at the South Entrance.

We parked the truck at the Visitor Center and boarded a shuttle bus, which took us down the scenic Zion Canyon drive. Amazing scenery.

There are nine stops along the route, and you can get off and on at any of them. But by the time we boarded it was 3:30 pm, and the last bus departed from the farthest stop at 6:15. If you missed it, you had a looooooong walk back to your car. So we stayed on the shuttle all the way to the last stop, and only got off to explore the trail that runs along the Virgin River to the slot canyon known as the Narrows.

And that is a post for another time, because I have a bazillion more pics and some of my readers live in places with Internet connections that struggle with massive web pages. So…to be continued!