My best friend Lloyd and his girlfriend Juanita are going to be heading off to South Africa (her home country) to live this Spring. Actually, Juanita’s visa runs out in a few months, she will return home to Johannesburg, and Lloyd will follow in June when his lease expires.
They will be missed.
We socialize a lot with these two: I hike regularly with both of them and we have a home-and-home dinner/card game every couple of weeks. On one of those occasions, I found out that both Lloyd and Juanita had never visited Zion National Park, one of America’s coolest parks that is only a 90-minute drive from Mesquite. So, we decided to take a day trip up to Zion in January when the leaves are off the trees, snow is on the ground, and tourists are almost totally absent.
The four of us drove up yesterday. Lloyd was surprised that the park was “so close” and an easy drive, as well. After passing St. George, Utah by a couple of miles, the driver takes a right turn off of I-15, drives through Hurricane, and then takes a leisurely drive about 20 miles up to the Springdale entrance.
There was plenty of snow blanketing Pine Mountain as we drove through St. George.
In the off-season, the trams are not running in Zion and private automobiles are allowed to drive on all the roads. Initially, we drove the main loop road all the way back to the Temple of Sinawava, which is the jumping off point for The Narrows hike.
The outside temperature back there was 32 degrees in the sun and about ten degrees cooler in the shade. We were going to walk the mile down to the entrance to The Narrows but it was too damn cold. We settled instead for a few photos and observation of some browsing deer.
One thing that I will say about visiting Zion, which is my favorite national park, in the Wintertime: there are no crowds (great!), the snow is pretty against the reddish-orange cliffs, but the lack of greenery (the leaves have all fallen!) takes away about half the magnificence of this special place. I felt bad that Lloyd and Juanita saw it this way, even though it is still beautiful.
I pointed out some of the places that I’ve hiked in Zion, including Angels’ Landing and Observation Point. We couldn’t get close enough to The Narrows to appreciate that world famous slot canyon, but I think they could imagine its glory from the sheer cliffs at the Temple of Sinawava.
After driving the loop and taking some photos, we headed out Hwy 9 (easterly), zigzagged our way up the rocky cliff, went through the Zion-Mt Carmel Tunnel, and drove a ways through the snowy mountains. I’d never been through the mile-long tunnel before: what an engineering marvel! Every so often, the engineers had provided for “windows” through the rock to provide ventilation and light. Really cool.
We finished up our Zion turn-around trip with a nice meal at the Black Bear Diner in St. George.
What a nice day it was!