Zion National Park

On the third day of our stay in southern Utah, we decided to check out Zion National Park.  Once again we were up before dawn and hit the road immediately after a quick breakfast.  It took about an hour for us to drive to the northwest and the East entrance of Zion National Park.  The eastern uplands of Zion are fabulous with layers of sandstone sweeping and curving in all directions.  I've heard it described before as Petrified Motion, and that description is really fitting.  Our first stop was at a small roadside turnout.  We had spotted some interesting hoodoos high up on a slope above the road and adjacent wash.  At this time of day the valley was still in deep shadow, and there was a crisp chill in the air.  The temperature was below freezing here in the high country and we bundled up for the walk up the ridge.

While we were photographing here, the sun cleared the ridge at the opposite side of the valley and some warm light worked its way into the valley and began to light up the hoodoos.  Soon the morning chill was gone and we stayed for a while, making some photographs with the view cameras.

A short time later we carried on a little further down there road and soon found ourselves at another roadside turnout.  Some small shrubs down in the wash... maples and oaks mostly, were in glorious fall color.  There were some nice outcropping ridges here and the morning sun was really accentuating the textures of the layers.  Once again the big cameras came out for a while.  We saw some Desert Bighorn Sheep here too, but didn't manage to get any decent shots of them.

After this stop we continued on into the park.  The road passes through a tunnel that is a little over a mile long.  Quite the engineering marvel considering that it was constructed in 1930.  Traffic is controlled to one direction at a time to allow some of the larger vehicles and RV's to pass through without incident.  After leaving the tunnel the road switches back and forth several times and drops down into the main canyon of the Virgin River.  It is noticeably more lush here due to the presence of water and the lower elevation.  The road up the main canyon of the park is closed to vehicle traffic.  Visitors are expected to park in lots and take shuttle buses up the valley.  Not particularly practical with large format camera gear.  The place was over run with people and most of the parking areas were full.  Traffic was being directed down the valley to the town of Springdale to park there and catch the shuttles.  This is very different from the last time I was here...over 30 years ago.  We all decided that it was too busy and none of us had any desire to ride shuttle buses with hoards of tourists.  So we promptly left the park and headed through Springdale to the south.  We drove up the Kolob Canyon road, back into a more remote part of Zion National Park.  It was already too late in the day for us to consider a highly rated hike called "The Subway", and besides, we didn't have the necessary permits.

After this we started making our way back towards Kanab.  We made a brief stop at a ghost town called Grafton, but all that remained was an old cemetery dating back to the 1860's.  We drove back up the switchbacks, again through the tunnel, and back out of the park at the east gate.  On the way back to Kanab we decided to make a short side trip to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.  In places the dunes were overrun by ATV's and in other areas there were just a lot of human footprints.  It was difficult to compose any images without incorporating these undesirable elements.  So, the bigger cameras never came out and we just wandered around for a while taking some digital snapshots.  Not all the tracks in the sand were as a result of human disturbance.  There were a lot of animal tracks too... chipmunks, lizards, beetles, etc.

Once we finished up here we packed up and headed back to Kanab for the usual evening routine... dinner and to load more film holders for tomorrow...