Driving on through the Grand Canyon we pass the nearby Glen Canyon Dam which we were told was letting a huge amount of water out for 36 hours in a 5 yearly release to maintain water levels. It turns out that nothing was happening and we only saw it on TV days later. Still, the Glen Canyon seemed picturesque enough with it's deep blue contrasting with the red surrounds. Clearly a popular place for boating too. Bloody windy though.
Zion National Park is in the South Western corner of Utah and it's nothing short of stunning, no surprise then that it's Utah's most visited park. Huge scarred mounds of rock tower over the narrow strip of tarmac weaving it's way through the park down below.
The smoothed domes of rock once were mighty sand dunes and over time have solidified.
A mile long tunnel cut into the rock in the 30's delivers us into yet more monolithic stone, some vertical and smooth others craggy and triangular.
Even just entering Utah can't help but be staggering. Red, and sometimes yellow and purple, landscapes with scattered Indian habitations. Stepped red rock mountains and wide dusty scrub land make up an hour or so of driving. Sometimes the road ends literally where the vertical precarious rocks begin and it's clear rock slides are common.
We pass through a majority Indian town called Page. This was an odd place in a way as it's the first predominately non-white town we'd seen. The kids on the streets seem happy enough unlike the adults who seem largely miserable. The housing is dilapidated and overgrown with weeds wrapped around rusting vehicles of all sorts. This seems a common theme in many towns we've seen, shells of cars rusting away and seemingly thrown about the area randomly.
Back in Zion, the name actually mean 'Heaven', and we take a couple of walking trails through the snow and ice and past semi-frozen pools of water atop soft sand, also covered in snow, on which freezing clear water falls.
Groups of Antelope prance around looking nervous at anybody or thing that gets close. We pass under stone arches and caves in the rock dripping with ice cold water that seeps through feeding hanging moss and the plants below.
We walk along a fossilised sand dune trail leading us around the edge of a deep canyon which brings us to more stunning views. This place truly is jaw dropping. I think we've taken more photos here than any other single place and I'm not even totally sure why. I think it all came together at once, the good weather, the stunning place and the relative quietness of it all.
The sun constantly changing the rock faces in front of us throughout the day and the shadows of mountains flung across oppositely faced mountains.
It's difficult to rely the beauty we saw in the two days we spent here. Utah is off to a great start.
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