We are headed to Zion today! Tonight we are going into Georgetown to see Brian Regan who is one of Jason's favorite comics! We are going to go out to dinner for the first time and also stop by the store to re-stock our food. We were up early and on the road. This is a very popular campground--someone actually reserved our site yesterday for this morning. Crazy...it made us glad that we got the site two days ago. We have reservations at Zion so there are no worries there!
This is the creek that we had to cross in the car to get back to our campsite.
This is Powell Point...it was used as a landmark during John Wesley Powell's expeditions and rises 10,000 feet above sea level.
We decided to stop by Bryce National Park and hike the Mossy Cave trail. It is not a very long trail and take you a small waterfall and a mossy cave. The cave was not impressive at all...the waterfall was neat but nothing like what we have seen in the past few days.
When pioneers came to the area in the 1880's there wasn't reliable source of water. They spent 2 years to dig a 10 mile ditch so they would have water year-round. Here is the creek...
From here we headed to Zion. Zion is made up of Navajo Sandstone...this is Checkerboard Mesa which has two sets of lines forming the checkerboard pattern. The horizontal lines are wind-blown sand that formed sand dunes. The vertical lines are cracks caused by erosion and stress.
We then arrive at the tunnel on the Mt Carmel highway. This end of the canyon seemed to be a dead end thanks to this mountain...then the engineers decided the solution was to build a 1 mile tunnel thru the mountain. The tunnel was dug at a rate of 30-36 feet a day. The windows in the tunnel provide light now days but in the building of the tunnel, it is where they expelled rubble.
Here are some views from inside the tunnel...
The end is near...and the view from the end of the tunnel--just spectacular.
This is the mountain that the tunnel goes thru...and a close-up on one of the windows.
We got to the campground and set up camp. We were limited on time because we needed to be able to clean up before heading to Georgetown so we decided to go hike the Watchman Trail. The views of Zion were just amazing...
The Watchman...
We ended the day by seeing Brian Regan...he was funny as usual. The location of the amphitheater was actually in the rock. It was a beautiful area...Jason wouldn't let me take the camera in so all we got was a parking lot shot. We hiked about 3.5 miles today so a total of 48 miles for the trip so far!
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