Day 30: Zion NP - Road Trip - Aimless

July 10, 2013

Day 30: Zion NP - Road Trip

Today I did a bit of riding. I wanted to see the east side of the park, and go through the famous tunnel.

The ride from the campground to the tunnel itself is mostly up, but so pretty I hardly cared, and really, the grades were not that steep. This is the road...

This was the first part of the climb to get to the east side. Off to the left, still within view, is where they stop the cars before entering the tunnel.

Same road, a little closer so you can see...

Once I got up near the tunnel traffic was stopped by a park ranger, who controls traffic going east. There is another ranger on the east side, stopping traffic there. The tunnel is not wide enough for campers and buses to go through in both directions, so they need to stop the show so traffic can go through one way.

Bikes are not allowed at all, so the ranger waited for the first pick up truck to pass and asked the driver if I could hitch along. Of course that was no problem, and it was nice the ranger took care of asking for me.

Once on the other side of the tunnel I stopped and did a little hike, about a mile, to a beautiful overlook of the valley I just climbed into.

Part of the trail that led to the overlook point

This was the point that overlooked the canyon that is shown in pictures 1 and 2 above

From there it was just a matter of pedaling on an amazingly picturesque road, in VERY hot weather with no shade. It sure was pretty though. I just love that red rock stuff, and the road that is red too.

This is the entrance to the small tunnel that cyclists CAN ride through

A few miles after the tunnel I saw a couple who was out of their car and staring up at a cliff on the side of the road. I stopped too and saw a whole flock of big horn sheep! Beautiful to see them in the wild like that! And there were so many.

There was a whole flock (would it be a flock?) of big horn sheep up on a cliff! So COOL!

See, look at them all! And there were more than this that I couldn't get in the picture.

I rode a while longer and then turned around, repeating the whole process (tunnel, etc) in reverse.

Once past the tunnel and down, I headed towards Zion Lodge for a snack, and a cold drink, after which I kept on'a go'in.

I rode to the end of Zion Canyon, to the trail head were I hiked the narrows, and back to the campground. But by the time that I got to that trail head, it was so hot that I put my outer shirt under the faucet until it was totally wet. It felt great, and I was cool, but it didn't take more than a couple of miles for the shirt to totally dry, that's how hot it was!

So at the next trail head with water I repeated the process and made my way to the campground, and the river next to it, where I jumped in to cool off.

Luckily Zion canyon itself is lush, compared to the east side, and there was a bit of shade in the trees.

But heat or no heat, it was a great day, with great scenery. This place is awesome!

To get a sense of scale, look at the bottom right of the picture for two hikers

That's me, pretending to be surfing. ....'cause it kind of looks like a giant wave. Get it?
Hey, you try and think of things to take pictures of when it's 110 degrees and your brains are frying! I'm doing my best!

The main canyon at Zion. Much more lush than the east side.

This bridge was part of the bike trail near the campground. Its a nice trail but way too short, although, because of the shuttles, the road in Zion is very quiet, with very few cars at all. Perfect!

Today's ride: 39 miles (63 km)
Total: 1,333 miles (2,145 km)

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