When you leave Vegas on I-15 east you drive through high desert, toward some very impassible-looking mountains. I kept asking Mark "where we are going to cross these things?" It just didn't look possible to drive over them. Then at the last minute you see that you aren't going to drive over them--someone has blasted through them at a point that once was a sliver of canyon but is now a slightly-enlarged sliver of canyon.
Then, as soon as we hit the Utah state line, things got very beautiful. Do they pay extra for that? It must be the edge of the Colorado Plateau, the raised sandstone beds that became Zion and Bryce and the Grand Canyon (with the help of some rivers). My awe began there and hasn't stopped.
We're staying just outside the entrance to Zion national park, in the town of Springdale, Utah, where you can find this very cool shepherd's trailor (from the 1950s) which is being renovated by the owners of the below B&B, which also looks very cute. If you ever come to Zion (it is immensely beautiful here), that would be a great place to stay. There are artists in the little town, a couple restaurants, and a couple gemstone places, but really no tacky souvenier stores to ruin the views, which are (did I already mention) fabulous.
Under the Eaves B&B
Here is the tiny trailor, which contains a fold-up bed and
a woodburning stove, amongst other stuff (unfortunately, I
didn't have the cajones to ask to
see inside)
The 3-foot-wide chassis is from a Model A Ford. The rest of the trailor
was built in the 1950s with an aluminum body, and is being
rebuilt by Steve Masefield, owner of the B&B.
Here is the view from our bedroom window
Today, Mark hiked up to Angel's Landing (1500 feet elevation gain over 2.2 miles--Steep), a hike I'd done ten years ago and remembered good enough. Here are some of the pictures from his hike:
at the top, they installed a lot of chains to hold onto, for places like this:
When you get high enough, you get to see where you came from:
Katie and I stayed at the bottom. Here are pictures from there:
