National Parks are flippin' sweet

Got up and hit the road from Grand Junction this morning at about 8:00 am. There are a lot of national parks along the route today, and I wanted to make sure I hit at least one. (I was on I-70 by the way.) I knew I wasn't going to be able to hit them all, but the two I had a good chance of getting were Arches and Zion National Parks. Whether or not to go to Arches basically came down to me coming to the exit, and trying to decide whether to get off or not. I eventually decided against it, because I wasn't sure how much time I was going to have for the rest of the day. It was a hard one though, cause I've seen pictures and it looks absolutly gorgeous. Arches, in the words of Arnold, "I'll be back."

I-70 to I-15 across central Utah is freaking phenominal. Rock formations everywhere, canyons, etc. I got lots of pictures at the scenic rest stops. Will post those as soon as I get the pictures developed!

At Richfield, I got on Highway 89 going south, but stopped to get gas. Just so you know, according to the Flying J gas station in Richfield, UT, the Terrorist Threat Level is Moderate. Apparently there must be something besides horses and cows in that town that terrorists might want to destroy. I'm guessing they're Republicans.

Highway 89 is also very beautiful. For the first part of it, it winds along the base of the mountains along a river bed. There was a bike path there too, perhaps I'll have to come back someday!

Eventually got to Zion National Park at about 1pm mountain time. Any words that I have to describe it wouldn't do it justice, so either look it up on the internet or wait until I post pictures. I pulled off at one of the stops in the park and went on a quick hike up to a "canyon viewing area" It took about 20 minutes to get up there, but when I did, the views were breathtaking. We were at the mouth of a canyon about 2000 feet in the air. Many pictures were taken.

Zion has very narrow roads running through it, especially to some of its more popular points, so they have an interesting way of taking care of it. Cars in the late 90's were beginning to crowd the roads too much, so now they have everyone park in the visitor center parking lot and then take a shuttle. Shuttles run every 5 minutes or so, so you're never waiting long for a shuttle. I took one into the canyon of the Virgin River, one of the rivers that carved out Zion. It's a really cool place and I walked along the shores of it, again, taking mucho pictures.

On my way back to the parking lot on the shuttle, it started to rain. Like really really hard. Everyone got off the shuttle and ran to a shelter about 20 feet away. The parking lots were a good 100 yards away so we waited until the rain let up a little before all making made dashes to our vehicles. Once inside, I drove through the rain for about 15 minutes until it let up, and got into St. George at about 6:30. Staying at a Days Inn here, and tomorrow it's Fresno or bust!