Monday June 2 to Wednesday June 4

From lovely Bruce Canyon we drove to Zion Naional Park, in a round-about way since we needed a Wolly-World Stop. We were low on food, and Michael needed a new jump rope. Keeping a 16yo boy stuck 24/7 with his mom and younger brother content has become quite THE challenge on this trip. Michael desires exercise, lots of it, and our hikes just don’t do the trick for him. He wants to sweat, and to breath hard and to stay in-shape so that when he returns to his speed skating team he will still be in great shape. Also, if he is able to exercise hard then he is happier and is more content to be with his mom and younger brother 24/7.

From Zion we drove to Cedar City and when Michael, my navigator, asked me whether I wished to go the scenic route or the route Streets & Trips recommended I opted for the scenic route. WOW!!!! We traveled up and over a mountain and found ourselves passing through Cedar Canyon National Monument. Cedar Canyon looks like Bryce but on a grander scale. Sitting at over 10,000′ snow was still everywhere, and the views down into the valley, sitting at 4000′ were breathtaking. We opted to camp here for the night until we learned that the campground was still closed. Too muddy from the snow that had just finished melting. ugh.

At Cedar City we picked up all our food needs and continued on. I made a quick call to my friend AnnMarie having thought of her as we drove through a small Utah town having a Quilt-Walk-Festival and found her to be with a mutual friend from WA. A few words later and we have a new stop for our trip at Ann’s home close to Mt. St. Helen’s. It will be great to see her again.

Arriving to Zion we grapped the last camp spot, set up camp and headed to the visitor’s center. Zion has steep sandstone walls, sandstone laid millions upon millions of years prior to Bryce, and as a result is harder and denser than Bryce. Weathering and erosion play the role of shaping this canyon and each shutter bus drivers pointed out different recent landslides that had reshaped the canyon walls.

Tuesday we hiked to the ‘tourist’ spots; emerald pools, river walk, weeping rock, canyon overlook and py’rus trail. Wednesday we planned to hike to observation point which would have been a terrific 8-mile hike up the 2500′ canyon walls but when we got up the sky looked nasty. A few phone calls to friends with www access confirmed that Zion might have thunderstorms. Quickly we decided to pack up and move on. Off to CA we headed.

The drive was easy to Vegas with the exception to the very rocky start we had. Michael needs time alone, time to re-group so when we stopped in to REI to purchase a new tent I said OK to Michael purchasing a solo tent. We still have 6 weeks on this trip and that’s plenty of use-time and hopefully will provide him with a space to go to to get some alone time for him.

Yes, we had to purchase a new tent on this trip. Our tent is around 20 yrs old and the all the wind storms had taken their toll on this tent. WIND! oh my, little did we know what waited for us west of Vegas.

WIND. High Wind warnings were what we heard on the radio about 30 minutes outside of Vegas, gusts to 65mph were coming, and I believe it. For 5 hrs, or about 300 miles of our 550 miles of driving were in high head winds, and white-out conditions. It was the hardest driving I have ever done, the worst-driving conditions I have ever been in, just awful, awful, awful. Dust flying everywhere, and most the time you couldn’t see more than a few cars in head of you. Just awful, awful, awful.

Finally we arrived in a little town outside of Kings Canyon National Park, ate some real food, took very needed showers, got a good night’s sleep and will get out oil changed this morning before we head to our next destination.