Zion to Colorado Springs

Mo and I arrived at Zion National Park in the late afternoon.  I told Mo that the important thing about travelling is to have a good map, a gps system, and then a good amount of common sense.  In this case I left my common sense in the car and got on a bus going away from the park.  After correcting my mistake we finally got on the correct bus and headed up through the valley.

Zion is on of the most unique places in the U.S. to me.  Tremendous view in all directions.  We got off at the lodge took a 3 mile walk up through the mountains to an area called Emerald pools.  Really beautiful.  The most memorable thing to me was the sound of tree frogs.  At the lower pool they were so loud it sounded like sheep bleating.

Next we hoped on the bus again and headed up through the Valley.  They only allow buses to hold down the traffic and the air pollution.  Good concept.  We got out a couple of stops up the way and hiked along the side of the river.  After a couple more miles we hoped the bus the last time. I had told Mo about an area called the Narrows.  I did the hike twice in one day 2 years ago.  Probably my favorite hike ever.  You walk up through the Virgin river for quite a while.  In our case, the water started getting deeper, and we decided to head back.  Now back to set up our camp.

Man, We had a rough night at Zion.  We started out setting up our tents in the dark.  First time for that. The temperature was about 90 degrees.  We decided to leave the covers off the tents.  Pretty good idea, until the wind kicked up to 30 miles per hour at 3 a.m.  Mo got nervous that he might be blown away and chose to fold up his tent and sleep in the car.  I'm a little heavier than him, so decided that being blown away by a 30 mph wind was the least of my worries.  I woke up about 7 a.m. with the wind still blowing.  Mo was no where to be seen.  I thought he had started walking back to Blacksburg.  As it ended up I caught a view of him sound asleep.  No showers available this time, so we brushed our teeth and headed out.  As long as we both smell bad neither one will notice.



Our trip today involved a place in Eastern Utah called Arches.  Here we found about 100 arches, created by water.  Our favorite thing was the balanced rock.  Very amazing it hadn't fallen.  We mostly drove through the park.  I drive and Mo hops and and takes pictures. Obviously I did this one.  We reloaded at McDonald's in Moab Utah, and headed out to Grand Junction, Colorado.  Dinner of chicken and rice again, at Applebee's this time.

This morning we drove from Grand Junction to Colorado Springs.  Along the way we took some roads through the rockies, seeing peaks over 14,000 feet and on road  over 11,000 feet.  We saw frozen lakes, even as we close in on the first of June.

In Colorado Springs  we were in search of a place called Garden of the Gods, which is a city park.  It is just below Pike's Peak, where we are going in the morning.    It was very nice, and I think if someone hadn't been to the places we had over the last two weeks it would have been impressive.

Dinner tonight at a Brazilian restaurant called Tucano's.  Mo expanded his dinner to include a salad bar and some meats that they bring around on huge skewers.  Really a cool concept.