The 2-hour, $25 Detour

Have you ever been on a road trip and found yourself dreading driving back the way you came? Well, that's what happened to us on Monday as we got ready to leave ABQ.  We had driven southeast out of Salt Lake City in order to visit Arches and then continued southeast toward Albuquerque.  Well, to be perfectly honest, the only good part of all that road is the 30 miles into Moab and then the 30 miles out of Moab.  The rest is full of road construction, 55 mph zones, tiny, poverty-stricken towns and oh yeah, lots of nothing on the horizon.  Blech.  Let's just say I was not looking forward to that again.  So, we plotted a new course.  Westward, ho!

We headed west into Flagstaff, then north toward Utah.  We woke up on Tuesday morning on the edge of the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.

Our next stop was Zion National Park in southwest Utah.  The charge per vehicle to drive through Zion is $25.  That was 25 bones well spent.  Zion is one of most breathtakingly beautiful places I've ever been.  As the road curves through the park, you descend deeper into this huge canyon with sheer walls on each side.  The road cuts through the cliff walls in a tunnel about a mile long and since there are so many huge RVs that try to go through, they keep the tunnel to one lane.  We were lucky and ended up as the last car so we could stop and take photos through the lookouts.  Oh, and hand off the baton to the park ranger of-course.   The park has a great shuttle service that will take you up to the trailheads deep into another canyon, but since we had to make to Boise on Tuesday night, we just didn't have time for the shuttle.  Arrgh.   We only spent two hours in the park, but two hours were all I needed to know I have to go back.  We will so be back.

The best way to describe Zion is through the photos so enjoy!  (These were all taken on our point and shoot camera so I'll post some of the good shots from B's big dog camera once he gets them downloaded. )