Yesterday we had to take the road across to Cedar City, some 60 miles to our West. The trip takes us along Highway 14, the Markagunt High Plateau Scenic Byway. It lives up to its' scenic billing as we rise up to nearly 10,000 feet above sea level to the summit of Cedar Mountain. Down in lowly Glendale (at about 6000 feet) the last vestiges of snow have disappeared but up at 10,000 feet on Cedar Mountain there is still a covering of snow on the alpine meadows. The whole byway is 40 miles long, the last dozen or so miles cutting through a canyon with steepling walls, before reaching the plateau and Cedar City.
Cedar City, a place with a grand name, but little else to it apart from a few shops! After spending minimal time doing a few chores we head south on I-15, coming off on the exit for Zion National Park. Although we had already visited Zion, we had really loved it, and there were a few areas we had not managed to fit in during our last trip two days before. We park up at the Visitors Centre and take the bus up the valley. Our stops include the Weeping Rock, where you climb steeply for ½ mile to a sandstone cliff where the water that fell some 1200 year ago upon the top of the mesas seeps out, creating a temperate ecosystems at the base of the cliffs. After getting soaked by the waters of the Weeping Rock, we cross the road to the see the Virgin River. On the way back Mark has a shock -nearly stepping on a 4 foot long snake, luckily it was not a rattle snake, but still a bit scary. From Weeping Rock we catch the bus to the stop known as the Grotto, from here we take a 1 ½ mile Kayenta Trail which climbs upwards, and follows a ledge some 200 to 300 feet about the valley floor, eventually arriving at the Emerald Pools, before descending back to Zion Lodge. We take the bus back from Zion Lodge to the Visitor Centre before setting off back to our motor home.Today we set off to our next destination, Page, just across the Utah border in Arizona.
Time zones in this part of the world are somewhat confusing.
Arizona maintains Pacific Standard Time, but all other States around it follow Mountain Time, as does the Navajo Nation Reservation, which makes up a large chunk of Arizona. As we are criss-crossing State boundaries at the moment on a seemingly continuous basis it is all too easy to get bamboozled. Page sits on the banks of Lake Powell (named after the pioneer explorer John Wesley Powell, a one-armed American Civil War veteran who explored the river via three wooden boats in 1869). Lake Powell, the second largest man-made lake in the United States, was formed in the late 1950’s by damming the Colorado River at Glen Canyon. Page was created to house the construction team and current day employees of the Glen Canyon Dam.
Our campsite is inside the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, with superb views across Lake Powell.
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