May 24 - United States: Zion National Park, Utah

This morning, we skipped the pancakes and headed into Silverdale to get some coffee and bagels from a place called "The Mean Bean".  On the way there Jon asked me "Did you lock the tent?", which made me laugh for a while.  The Mean Bean is a little place with great coffee and bagels and where - according to Joe behind the counter - the sarcasm is free.  This guy had a really dry sense of humor and knew everyone that walked into that place.  So we hung out and ate our breakfast and laughed at the various barbs flying between Joe and his customers.

Ride With A Ranger

Yesterday, we decided we would take advantage of one of the park's free programs.  (Well, free if you don't count the fact that our tax dollars pay for it all).  We got two tickets for the "Ride With A Ranger" tour, which is a two-hour shuttle ride through the park narrated by a Park Ranger.  We got to the bus and sat down, and - I'm not kidding - we were the youngest people on the bus.  That really doesn't come as a big surprise, because most people our age are out hiking.  But we'd decided that we wanted to learn something about the park in addition to seeing it.

Bethany, our park ranger, was full of information and interesting stories.  She knew all about the plant life, animals, geology, and history of the park.  For example, at one stop she pointed out that there was an old cable contraption on the top of a cliff.  Early settlers used this as a money-making scheme.  They logged lumber off the top of the cliff and transported it down via cables.  Bethany said that it didn't produce a lot of revenue, but they workers had a great view from the ride up and down the cables each day.

The rest of the tour was pretty nice and informative, but Jon and I pretty much decided that we would leave the "Riding With A Ranger" to the older generation from now on.  We would much rather have been hiking.  

Cliffs in Zion Park

Hike to The Emerald Pools

Back at the Visitor's Center, we sat on a rock and ate turkey sandwiches for lunch.  Then we packed up our stuff and caught the shuttle to The Lodge, where we hiked to the Emerald Pools trail.  I remember doing a trail like this once, and we ended up at a beautiful lagoon of crystal-green pools.

Clearly, that was a different Emerald Pools.

These pools weren't really emerald, nor were they pools.  They were more like ditches.  The hike was pretty easy, about one and a half miles up.  Not a problem, really.  We didn't stop at the middle pools and instead continued up to the upper pool.  This was a little greener than the others and was more of a pool.  And the cliffs around it were beautiful.  And it was crowded with people hanging out in the shade.  Jon and I did some scampering around on the rocks to get to a quiet spot, where we sat for a while.  

Jon At The Emerald Pools

There were little silver frogs on the rocks close to the water, and the more we looked the more we found.  After about twenty minutes of sitting in the sun, we moved into a shady area to relax.  Not long later, we made our way back down.

On the way down the path, we took more time to enjoy the scenery and take pictures.  This is a picture of some rock piles left on one of the larger rocks by hikers.

Rock Piles on Emerald Pools Hike

Post-Hike Bliss

At the bottom, we went to the lodge and treated ourselves to some ice cream.  Then we caught the shuttle to the Visitor's Center and headed back to the RV Park.  There, we spent a few hours relaxing.  Jon set up our new $10 Wal-Mart hammock in a shady spot by the river, and I laid out in the shade at the pool.  We both tried to nap, but neither had much success.  Me because of the serious game of "Marco Polo" going on at the pool, and Jon because - as he said, "Eeeeeverybody wants to talk to the guy in the hammock".  

It turns out that one of the RV owners struck up a conversation with Jon about RVs and whatnot.  Jon, who used to think that RVs were something only rednecks owned, has recently come around to decide that it's a darn nice way to see the countryside.  The way he figures it, someone could sell their house and buy one of the larger slick RVs for $150,000 and put the rest into savings.  Then they could live very nicely for the next few years, just driving around and seeing stuff.

Boy, were we wrong.

We'd admired one of larger, bus-sized RVs in the campground.  It had aluminum siding instead of fiberglass, and looked like it could withstand a hurricane and a small nuclear war.  The RV owner Jon talked to said that these RVs started at $750,000 and went upwards of $1.5 million.  You have GOT to be kidding me!!  And that doesn't include the car you would tow behind the RV for day-to-day sightseeing.  Wow.  Looks like we're going to need to make some adjustments to our retirement plan.

Anyway, I got tired of the Marco Polo game and decided to catch a few Zzz's in the tent.  That was a truly bad idea.  As you can see from the picture below, we had no shade over our campsite.

Campsite at Zion River 

So our little tent had turned into a convection oven.  I unzipped all the doors with the hope that the breeze would cool things off, but no such luck.  So I was happy when Jon showed up and it was time for dinner.  We cooked up some soup on the camping stove and enjoyed the last of the Utah 3.4% alcohol beers.  Jon can't wait until we get to Arizona and can buy normal beer again.

Rat Race

After dinner, we showered and went to the Social Hall for the 8:00 showing of "Rat Race".  This was a hysterical movie with a really goofy ending.  But we definitely enjoyed watching it.