Monday, October 3, 2011

Zion National Park, Day 2

For some reason, arriving at this park was very tiring.  So tiring that we turned in early and slept like a log.  However, we were up at our regular time of 6 AM or so.  It was  time to have breakfast and do some surfing before walking to the Visitor Center to start the day's activities.

Our first order of business was to see if we could get on the 9 AM tour led by a ranger.  His answer was, "Well, normally no, but today we have lots of openings!"    So that occupied the AM part of the day and provided us much background on different aspects of the park.

In the PM, we road the bus again back to the "Narrows" and then hiked the trail to where there is longer a trail, only a long mile walk up the path.  It went well other than I'd swear that when we were here 48 years ago, we went up much further.  I think at that time, we were able to cross the river on stones and continue on to the other bank.  Eventually, the valley closes in with the walls being only about 10 to 15 feet apart and upwards about a thousand feet.  Knowledgeable people say don't even get near it on a day like today with possible showers.  With rain in the high country and no soil or vegetation to hold the moisture, flash flooding is a common occurrence

It sure felt great to get back to our motorhome tonight.  But tomorrow we'll do another walk of the interesting locations. We also learned today that there is a need for a small student sized backpack.  Since we can't take our car up the valley, but have to ride a bus, what we take is critical.  If you don't take it, you can't have it.  If you take it, you have so much loose stuff that it becomes difficult to handle.   A nice student sized pack would work just great.  Perhaps when we see our granddaughters in the following years, we can acquire one that no    longer meets their approval as a proper student backpack.

Our solar electric power system system didn't perform very well today because of the excessive number of clouds.  So tonight  we used our small Honda 2000i to bring the batteries back to full charge.  Isn't technology wonderful?

It has been a tiring day with all of the walking, so it will be early to bed  (and soon).

Gene

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