The retired life of Greg and Dona: Zion National Park

Tuesday April 8, 2014

After leaving Lake Powell at 10:00, we arrived at the entrance to Zion National Park at 1:15, after making a stop in Kanab UT for groceries. The time has changed to daylight savings time in Utah so it was actually 2:15 when we arrived. BUT...I am not changing my watch or any of the clocks because we will be going back to Pacific daylight time in a couple of days. DISCLAIMER: ALL TIMES NOTED IN THE NEXT FEW BLOGS WILL BE IN PDT (Pacific Daylight Time).

So, anyway, we get to the fee station and because Greg has the Senior Pass, we get in free at all the National Parks and Forests... sweet! No fee to enter the park but to travel to the side of the park that we want to get to (we are at the East entrance and we want to go to the South entrance) we have to pay $15.00 to drive our RV thru the tunnel at Mt. Carmel. The tunnel is the only way to get to the south side besides driving another million miles all around the bordering country side. The tunnel is narrow and not very high. It is a 2-lane road but to accommodate larger vehicles, they close off one lane and have the large vehicle drive through the middle. The tunnel is 1.1 miles long. It has "view" points every few hundred feet or so. The view points are cut outs in the mountain walls. You can't stop and take pictures but the scene thru the car windows is pretty amazing. Once thru the tunnel we only had a few miles to drive to get to the only 2 campgrounds on this side of the park. One is reservations recommended and has full hook-ups, the other is on a first-come, first-serve basis. As with most of our planning, we didn't know we'd be making this trip so we didn't call to make reservations and the signs at the East entrance fee station said both campgrounds were "full". We saw so many campers (trailers, 5th wheels, RV's) driving around we just knew we'd have to find some place out of the park to camp. Greg, always the optimist, pulled into the reservation recommended campground at 2:15 (3:15 UT time...remember I'm using Pacific coast time), which is Watchman Campground, and just asked the Ranger at the fee station if there was an opening for the night (perhaps someone with a reservation didn't come in?). What do you know, there was an opening for just tonight!!!! We got a sight with electric only for $9.00 a night. If we wanted to stay for 2 more nights at this campground, we were told we'd have to check with the fee station in the morning at 9, to see if anything opened up. Our plan is to check in the morning with this campground and if nothing is available then ride our bikes to the other campground (less than a mile away) and hopefully we can snag one as someone is leaving.

I had not been feeling well all day, so as soon as we got set up, I crawled on the bed and slept for almost 2 hours. My head was really stopped up. I took some drugs and we ate a little left-over chili with quinoa and I went back to bed! Greg rode his bike around while I was napping but that was the only exercise we did today.

Lots of trails to hike....gotta feel better tomorrow!