Zion National Park

June 2

Another beautiful day in Paradise!  Once again our neighbours abandon camp early morning  but  we decide to hang here for a couple of hours enjoying the sun before it gets too hot.

Our plan for today is  to head NW towards the Zion National Park with the hope of camping in the park overnight.  We only have one battery charged for the camera so I am holding off until we get to the park for photos.  It’s truly amazing scenery again, we are agog!  This is like driving in the Grand Canyon, not just looking down at it from above!

We know that once we get into the Park there is are a couple of tunnels and the second, built in the 1920 when there weren't so many large vehicles is a two lane, very low tunnel (11 feet at the sides and 13 feet in the middle) which for a fee of $15 they will close the oncoming lane and allow us to go through using both lanes, keeping to the centre - we think we need a minimum height of 12’ 6” but this has never been actually tested!  I guess this is our chance - fingers crossed.  We are the only vehicle waiting to go in from the west and we wait about 10 minutes for the tunnel to clear, the last vehicle hands a baton to the Ranger and then it is our turn.  The tunnel is over a mile long, descending and curving so it is not easy to stay in the high bit in the middle.  It’s pretty dark but along the way there are some ‘portals’ to the outside which allow natural light to enter for a brief moment.  Yay, we are through without mishap!  There is a lot of traffic including bikers waiting to come through, so travelling east to west is obviously much less busy.  We are surprised to see what the ‘portals’ look like once we get outside the tunnel and look up, tiny!

Tunnel Entrance

Clearing the tunnel for us

Phew we made it!

See the tiny half moon shaped portal in the cliff above the mirror!

There are some serious switchbacks which the photos don’t do justice to but the IPAD does show how sharp/steep they are.  However there are lots of good pull off areas to get off the road and take photos so we take those opportunities when we can.

Switchbacks in Zion National Park

The signs at the entrance say ‘camps full’ but we pull in it the first one anyway, play our Kiwi card and manage to score a site at the second camp along, the Watchmans, right by the Visitors Centre and a pub etc.  The shuttle from the Visitors Centre takes you North to 8 points of interest which seem to be mostly hiking trails.  But it’s too hot this afternoon (101 F) so we give it all a miss opting to stay inside with the AC on full!

Tomorrow we are going to try and find a hydraulic repair outfit in St. George, the jacks are giving us grief.