The Elders of Zion

Day 11

We continued up 89 today into Utah. No visitors center--or even a sign--marked the transition. In fact, Utah did not respond to MarKay's emails requesting visitor information, so we are mapless as we drive through the state. If Garmin or the road signs let us down, we'll have to purchase a map. Unthinkable!

We passed a number of towns nestled under mountains which bear the town's initial in white (Page Arizona's P was the first example of this...it seems to be universal in Utah.) I'm not sure what the significance of this is.

We're seeing signs for a town called Freedonia. This is not named for the country in the Marx Brothers movie (although my MP3 of "We're Going to War" is handy.) This was founded by a polygamist group objecting to the reversal of Mormon policy on plural marriage. The name means "free women." Judge the irony as you will.

We stopped at a little town on the edge of the Grand Staircase with a visitor center. Sean proclaimed it as having the nicest restrooms he had ever seen. We are now armed with a map. We grabbed some groceries for camp meals. Next we visited a tourist shop which boasts a collection of sets from western movies. The adobe house with the cross shaped gun ports from the end of "The Outlaw Josey Wales" was among the attractions. It's actually made of fiberglass. Who knew?


Back on the road, we passed the Big Rock Candy Mountain...and yes we had the song and we played it. O' Brother Where Art Though is a good soundtrack for southern Utah.

89 heads right into Zion Canyon National Park. This seems to catch some tourists by surprise. Suddenly the highway costs $25 to travel on and the Road turns into a series of scenic switch backs that slow you to 5 miles an hour. Our park pass is really paying off on this trip.

Zion is a great park with tremendous views. This is LDS country, and the formations have names like the Three Patriarchs, The Altar, The Temple, The Sacrifice, The Pipe Organ, etc, etc, etc. Squirrels pose for photos on the trail and the occasional deer can be spotted if you're lucky. They have an excellent tram system that cuts traffic inside the park.

We are fortunate to be here in good weather. The entire park is at the bottom of the canyon, and flash floods can be a problem. The river was calm today, however, and we followed it toward the narrows of the canyon until we would have had to start wading. We also caught another interesting water feature, Weeping Rock, A section of porous sandstone sandwiched between layers of slate, creating a channel that forces water to pour through the rock wall in a continuous rain.



Unfortunately, there was no campsite availability today, so after Sean earned his badge, we had to head on to our next option, a pair of nearby state parks with campgrounds.

As we passed through the town of Hurricane, we saw billboards for cheap hotel rates and a movie theater, so we jumped to plan C and looked for a hotel room. But the cheap rates were only on weekends, and the motels were mostly booked. The state parks were completely filled as well (triathlon tomorrow, we were told) so we headed up the interstate to the next exit.

The next several exits had names like "ranch exit" or signs telling us there were no services. After 40 miles we arrived tired and very hungry in Cedar City, on route to our next park. We had a coupon for the Knights Inn, but we had to take a smoking room. We got back on the street looking for dinner. I saw some signs in the distance, but in my effort to dead recon my way toward them I found myself on the highway ramp going back south. It was 10 miles back to an exit we to turn around. We were starved by the time we hit Denny's. The smoking room was no problem by the time we got back; MarKay and Sean just crashed. and I made use of the WiFi to post a few blog entries.

Off to bed.