BEAUTIFUL UTAH

 We left Vegas on Friday and headed to St. George, Utah on route 15. We knew we had to get through that mountain somehow. A long curvy narrow road.

 We drove in Nevada then back into Arizona and arrived in Utah.

 We are staying in the KOA outside St. George. The weekend was very windy and cold.

 We had rain, the mountains had snow! After church on Sunday we had planed to bike some of the trails in St. George but is was too cold for biking. I worked on a puzzle instead.

 On Sunday evening we went to the tabernacle in St. George for the Southern Utah Heritage Choir Mother's Day concert.

 The choir filled the whole front of the church and both sides of the balcony. It was a very nice concert.

 Monday we spent the day at Zion National Park.

 Our first hike was Riverside Walk. We hiked along the river whenever we could instead of following the paved path.

 Flowers along the cliffs were beautiful. We saw a gentleman taking a picture of them and who should it be but Walter and Anita, the NOMADS we worked with at David and Margaret's in California. I knew him from his hat!

Our next hike was to the lower emerald pool and waterfall.

 More pretty flowers along the trail.

 You can not drive your car on Zion Canyon Scenic Drive, you have to use the shuttle bus. We enjoyed using the bus. The ride was narrated on the way up, there were lots of stops, and buses came at least every 15 minutes. We never had to wait long.

Across the street from the KOA is the Red Cliff Recreation Area. We walked some of the path on the weekend and Larry wanted us to take our bikes and see if we could get to the other side of the cliffs.

We found where the trail turned and went up to the top of the ridge. We are looking down on the trail we had just ridden.

An old ripped up car was over the rim, they didn't make it :)

The trail along the ridge.

Real mountain biking going down the other side of the cliff. I had walked my bike most of this ride, steep coming up and too rocky going down. Since we weren't sure what laid ahead and how far we had to go (we thought it was a loop) we chickened out and turned around. I was glad most of the ride home was downhill!

The cacti are in bloom.

They Came to Cordura  was filmed here in the 50's.

These are the remains of the Mexican village made for the movie. We ordered the movie from Netflix and the scenery sure looked familiar.

Wednesday we took the scenic drive through Zion and on to Bryce.

After Zion we came to Red Canyon. Wow, beautiful hoodoos along the road.

We went into the visitor center and they had this picture on the wall of the 10 inches of snow they had on Sunday.

We drove through amazing small tunnels and very long tunnels, what engineering.

We arrived at Bryce a little after noon, a 123 mile ride through beautiful country.

A prairie dog welcomed us.

We parked at Sunrise point and walked up this trail,

what a view when we got to the top!!

We decided to hike along the rim for awhile. It was a mile to sunset point. Here you can go down a steep trail to the floor of the amphitheater.

We started down the trail.

Looking through an opening.

This is as far as we decided to go down. We thought we might do the whole three mile loop tomorrow.

Instead of going back to our car we decided to continue our walk on the rim to Inspiration point, a little over half a mile.

It was a lot of uphill but we made it to the point.

The pictures don't show how breath taking this area is.

We made it this far so we hiked on to Bryce point, another 1 and 1/2 miles. We are at about 8,000 feet. Snow! so Larry made a snowball.

Bryce point up ahead.

We made it and what a view!

After a three mile uphill hike we were ready to take the shuttle back to our car.

We had decided to stay in the area overnight so we could see the sunrise. This hotel is just 2 miles outside of the park. We ate dinner at Ruby's Inn Cowboy buffet that is across the street.

At 8:30 we went back to Bryce to see the full moon. It was really bright.

After  a short night of sleep we were back at Bryce point at 5:45 to see the sunrise.

A little history.

The sun making its appearance. The temperature was only 30, so we were a little cold while we waited. the sun will heat it up quickly.

Sunrise on the hoodoos.

Everyone had a camera waiting for the perfect shot.

This man went out on a rock to get that perfect shot. not a good idea.

We saw deer as we drove out of the park.

We were to tired and sore from the last few days of hiking and biking, to take a long hike today so we enjoyed a leisurely drive home through this beautiful area. We can return another year and do some more hiking in these beautiful parks