More Zion National Park

The second day in Zion National Park was almost as exciting as the first day. We went to the 2 areas of the park we wanted to see - the Kolob Terrace area and the East Entrance road to the Park as seen on this map. We had already explored the main Canyon road and our goal was to drive to the end of the Kolob Terrace road and drive to the end of the East Entrance road.

We got a fairly early start - around 9:30 AM - and started out on the Kolob Terrace road. The views were very different riding along the road before the entrance to the west side of the park:

After driving for several miles, we came to the southwestern border of the park, and this sign:

There was no gate and no other indication that you were in the park except for that sign. We drove in and out of the park along this road and these are some of the views we had:

and we came across some Zion "wildlife" while driving through one area:

continuing along this road, we saw the park from the western side:

We could actually see, in the distance, the main canyon of the park where we were on Friday:

This particular area also had some areas with beautiful fall colors and Josie got "Aspen-itis" and took some nice photos of these colors as we approached the end of this road where the Kolob Reservoir was located:

We then drove back along this road, stopping at several different locations and taking more photos - there are over 150 photos again from yesterday. It's difficult deciding which ones to show, so these are a good representation of what we saw and where we where during the day.

The next goal was to take the East Road - Hwy 9 on the map from the eastern side of the park. We stopped in town just before the main entrance to the park and had some lunch at a place called Oscars - good, but pricey - before going through the gate and picking up the eastern road at Canyon Junction. It gave us another, totally different view of the park. We went on some switchbacks - scary in places - and through a tunnel which is well known in the park. These are some shots from that leg of our trip:

in some places, the road was just carved through the mountains:

Finally, after completing a fabulous 2 days in one of the country's gems of a National Park, we took several pictures of rock formations where, as you use your imagination, you can see figures that are represented in the rock formations. This one is a good example. Look in the center of the photo and you can make out a girl, with lots of hair around her head, sitting on the rocks:

Our 2 days of seeing Zion National Park were exciting and a wonderful experience. We purchased a blu-ray disk at the Visitor's Center called The Grand Circle, which is a great presentation of all the National Parks that are in the area. We will plan to see as many as possible during the month of April next year when we will leave AZ to head north to Jackson for another summer.

Today we drive a short distance to Mesquite, NV, where we will spend the next 2 days exploring the area which has been a draw for us for a long time. It will be nice to get the use of our satellite again and also get some decent signals for our cell phones and Internet access...