Visit to Four of Southwest USA's National Parks (Part Two of Many!)

The drive from Hurricane, UT to Bryce Canyon, UT was a very nice ride indeed, especially the portion of the drive between the Zion National Park entrance and the Checkerboard Mesa. My biggest mistake: judging distances in this part of the country based on the map-based distance, or even relying on Google maps and Mapquest's driving time approximations. Here is a view of the town of La Verkin, UT from the appropriately named La Verkin Overlook (need to thank Sundar for forcing me to learn and use the stitch function on my camera).

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Given that we were stopping practically every mile for a photo, we were behind schedule even before we even got to the State Road 9 (Zion Mount Carmen Highway) tunnel inside Zion National Park limits. Incidentally, "zig-zag curves" are referred to as <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;hl=en&amp;geocode=&amp;q=zion+national+park,+ut&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;ll=37.213037,-112.959452&amp;spn=0.01456,0.026436&amp;t=h&amp;z=15">switchbacks</a>. The previous night, I had thought about driving up to the tunnel in the evening as it was "only 3.4 miles" or something from the park's entrance. Good thing I had not attempted that!

As it was, we took about an hour to get there, and it would have taken us longer had we gotten stuck behind the RV that was about a few hundred metres behind us. That vehicle shows up in this picture (below) right about the centre - family was scared when I ran back to the car after taking this photo (I did not want them to cut us off)!

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This tunnel is narrow and bigger vehicles need to be escorted through the tunnel, as traffic is closed in the other direction for the duration that the big vehicle is travelling through. Needless to say, RVs and vehicles behind RVs are delayed by the amount of time that it takes the tunnel to be shut down in the other direction.

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Anyway, long story short, after a stop for Subway sandwiches that cost an arm and a leg apiece, we got to Bryce Canyon at about 1 pm, though we had left Hurricane about 9 am.

Here is a shot of Checkerboard Mesa!

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Visit to Four of Southwest USA's National Parks (Part One of Many!)

A year ago, Baab castigated us for having visited the Grand Canyon without him, notwithstanding the fact that this egregious act was committed prior to his birth. To propitiate him, we had to promise a trip in the near future. Well, tomorrow finally arrived recently.

My parents were scheduled to visit the USA to welcome a grandchild. Given that they were planning to be with us for a couple of weeks in June and we had vacation days to spare, I cobbled together a plan that had us visiting three National Parks (Zion National Park, UT; Bryce Canyon National Park, UT; Grand Canyon, AZ) in Southwest USA in one week. I will explain the title later ...

Zion National Park
My first mistake was not reading brother-in-law's e-mail properly and going to this place for sunrise, for which we had to wake up at 4:00 am. Big mistake. Zion is not the place for sunrise, or sunset for that matter. Unlike Bryce Canyon (which, technically, is not a canyon) and Grand Canyon, at Zion you are looking out from inside as opposed to looking in from outside. As a result, the scenery is not all that good unless, of course, you wake up really early and hike (climb) up to a spot in the canyon walls - that was out of question for us.

Mistake #2 was going out for sunrise in shorts and without a sweater.

The third mistake, parking the car at the Majestic View Lodge - way outside the park - not realizing that there are TWO shuttle bus routes, one from the town of Springdale upto the park and another intra-park shuttle.

Anyway, we atoned for my mistakes by spending an hour waiting for a bus to ferry us back to the place where we had parked the car; we waited at the very spot where the bus had dropped us off, which was none other than the spot where we should have driven to in our car. I had read too much into the information online which specified that individual vehicles were not allowed into the main drag of the Park this time of the year. The saving grace was that the two eldest members of the party and the youngest member were all left in the motel to catch up on their sleep. Also, I got to take this nice photo of the setting Moon (yes, I mean Moon, not Sun).

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A colourful e-mail address - a Katya tale

Well now, Baab has got a new e-mail account for himself, thanks to his mother, and has been e-mailing all grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. He even replied to his own e-mail when he did not get a response quickly enough (shades of what his father was told - he vehemently denies this - he himself used to do two decades ago!). Anyway, his excitement was infectious, so the little one was excited.

Katya: "I want one! I want one!"
Baab: "Wait until you are as old as I am now, and I will create you one."
Katya: "I want pink! I want pink!"