Day 6: Page and Zion

A fairly busy, active day today.. After some quick breakfast at the hotel we left for the Carl Hayden Visitor Center at the Glen Canyon Dam.

After looking around the Visitor Center a bit and taking a few shots of the dam and bridge we took the tour across and inside the dam. It was nice, we had a good view. The water level was fairly low but all in all it was fun to watch and experience once we cleared the initial security check. As long as we didn't take pictures of security or mentioned the words 'bomb" "guns" "attack" and all that stuff in any way whatsoever.

There were some nice views inside and outside so I'll post some shots here.

 That little circle-ish thing near the top right is the Visitor Center where we started out.

After the tour of the Glen Canyon Dam (with Christophe more oggling the cute tour guide than actually listening and looking around) we went to Zion! .. No, not the Matrix safe heaven for humanity but Zion National Park.

This place is HUGE! We went in from the East Entrace, travelled all the way down through the park by car (past the Mt. Carmel Junction and down State Route 9 coming off Highway 89) which is a lot of fun. It's 12 miles from the entrance to the actual Visitor Center and at the slow speeds you have to drive through the mile long tunnel and across the winding roads through the Park it takes you about an hour to get just from the Entrance to the Visitor Center where you can actually do stuff in the Park.

Just like with the Grand Canyon pictures just don't do it credit.. You really have to see it to get an idea of the scope of this park. Even the short hikes take an hour to do.

So, after finally arriving at the Visitor Center and finding a parking spot we checked out the surroundings and took the shuttle bus and visited the various spots. At the last drop-off we did the fairly easy hike (still is a brisk half hour walk) towards the Narrows (a tough, strenuous hike through the river and between canyon walls) which unfortunately we couldn't do. It was a good warm-up for things to come.

After this hike we got back on the shuttle and dropped off near the Zion Lodge to try the Emeral Pools trail.
And it was a LOT harder. A lot of steep descends along rocks and stones with just sand in between. The first part to the Lower Emerald Pool was pretty straightforward. The hike to the Middle Emerald Pool would have you panting at the end (of course we couldn't take it slow) and the last and longest part up to the Higher Emerald Pool was just brutal. We were both sweating and panting once we got there.. But it was good exercise and had fairly nice views :-) The way down went much faster but still took us a bit. I think in total that hike took about an hour and a half or so, maybe a bit more, for the roundtrip. After resting up a bit we continued on our trip.

But first, enjoy a few shots from Zion National Park.

So, after leaving Zion through Springdale we continued on to St. George with another nice hotel that has a lot of marble in the bathroom, VERY luxurious looking beds and of course another huge flatscreen HDTV. We went for a quick bite to eat in the local McDonalds. I took roughly the same I usually do in Belgium, except more. Now, in Belgium, for the same meal I had here today I probably would have paid up to 16-18 euros... Right now I paid just 7 dollars and it still tasted all just as good, except the sauce was even better here. What a difference in price...

Anyway, tomorrow morning we'll be heading to Las Vegas for a few days! This should be a lot of fun :-)

I'll try and post some updates again tomorrow!