June 7 Day 11

Where are Tom and Lennie Now? -Click Here For Our Current Location

We woke up to another extremely HOT day.  The temperature in this area hit 104 today, which was another record high.

We spent the entire day in Zion National Park today, then at the end of the day took a short 55 mile ride to Cedar City, Utah for the night.

Zion National Park is located near Springdale, Utah.  The park covers about 229 square miles.  The main feature of the park is Zion Canyon.  The canyon is roughly 15 miles long, and up to half a mile deep.  The canyon is composed of mostly Navajo Sandstone which was cut through by the Virgin River.  The elevation ranges from 3666 feet at the lowest point, to 8726 feet at the highest elevation.

Many of the sandstone cliffs in Zion reach over 2200 feet, and are claimed to be the tallest sandstone cliffs in the world.

Shortly after entering the park, I was accosted by these bold squirrels.  It seemed like they might have been looking for food.  This one charged over toward me on the walkway, then plopped down, spread eagle on his belly, and just stared at me.  After realizing I had no food to offer, he jumped up and went on his way.

This one I encountered later down the hiking trail, and he performed the exact same show.  He ran right up to me, plopped down spread eagle on his belly and stared at me.  No food, so off he went?

The canyon walls in Zion are just HUGE.  They shoot straight up from the canyon floor and seem to go on forever.  In fact, while trying to take photos, I found myself looking up so much, that I ended up stumbling around and almost falling numerous times.  The colors in the rock formations are just stunning.  The park has tons of hiking trails, and Lennie and I, being the avid hikers that we are, took advantage of what the park had to offer :)   I might be stretching the avid hikers comment a little bit, but we did do an awful lot hiking today.

Zion is also a popular place for climbers.  Look really close, and you can see one about 2/3 of the way up this face.

OK, I know you can't see him in the last photo, so here is a zoomed in shot of that same face.  Now you can see the climber pretty clearly near the center of the photo.

Here is another shot with even more zoom.  I have no idea what would possess someone to want to climb rock walls, but I find it pretty fascinating.

Here are some photos of various cliff formations in the park.

Like the squirrels, the Mule Deer in the park are pretty bold.  This small, young one wandered up to within a few feet of us while we hiked down one of the parks many trails.

Below is one of most common photos you will find of Zion park.  This formation is known as the Three Patriarchs.

Below is our route from today.  We covered 55 miles, which brings our trip total to 3424 miles. 

Tomorrow we head through Cedar Breaks National Monument, and then on to Bryce Canyon National Park.