Vacation Adventures Continued

Sorry I didn’t write any more about our journey last night. Apparently LiveJournal was experiencing technical difficulties.

When last we left Chuck and Nicole, they were leaving Kanab, Utah and heading to the gorgeous lands of Zion National Park. On our way there, we passed Coral Pink Sands State Park. I insisted that we stop and take a “look-see” as my trust worthy travel guide said it was spectacular. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworm we were at the beach. We took a short half mile hike around the park and oohed and ahhhed over the massive mounds of beautiful pink sand — check it out!

This is Chuck at the entrance to the dunes. This picture doesn’t do their height any justice, but know that they are massive.

This picture paints a better perspective. These are dirt bikes and we also saw a lot of dune buggies.

While we only walked about half a mile, the heat was brutal and the sand was very difficult to walk in.

I love this picture that Chuck took. It reminds me of the Arabian Desert — mind you I’ve never been there, but this is what I imagine it looking like.

After we left this neat, out-of-the-way stop, we continued our trek to Zion. We stopped at a small grocery and bought some sandwhich food for a picnic. We also bought a couple gallons of water. Never again would we be short of beverages on the road. The views were breath taking and each stop seemed to me more gorgeous than the next.

The hole in the moutain is actually a really long tunnel that we had to travel through to get to the bottom of the canyon. The road has been around forever, long before RV’s. As a result, the road becomes one way once an RV approaches the tunnel. Needless to say, there are a LOT of RV’s and it took us a while to make it through the tunnel.
Once we reached the visitor center, we parked our car and took the park buses up the canyon. A few years ago, the powers that be decided that there were too many vehicles entering into the park. Now, you can only enter by their buses. It’s great, however, and helps with traffic and parking. The buses are extrememly efficient and come every six minutes. Our first stop was the weeping rock and its hanging gardens.

If you blow up this photo, you will see the water coming off and out of the rock. It’s really a neat sight. As a result, there are all sorts of plants growing off of the rock. I loved looking out and hearing the water running. It seemed like it was raining.

I love this picture. It reminds me of Jurassic Park. At any moment I expect a pterodactyl to come swooping by. After weeping rock, we headed to the top of the canyon in search of a swimming hole. The bus driver said we probably wouldn’t find one unless we could swim in 6 inches of water. Evidently, he’d never seen me swim. If there was a little bit of water, I would get my body into it.

Check out the canyon walls!

You can’t tell, but I was able to find water that reached up to my butt. As a result, we had a very relaxing time floating on our backs down the Virgin River.