Doreen and Laura's Excellent Adventure: On to Red Rock Country

Jacob Lake, AZ to Kanab, UT (more sightseeing!)

May 31-June 2, 2016

We made Kanab, UT our next sightseeing hub. It's a nice town set in the red rocks of southern Utah. From here we set out to visit Zion National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument and Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. If you've never been to southern Utah then please put it on your bucket list. It is an amazing place!!! I don't know if Utah has the most National whatevers (Parks, Monuments, Historical Parks, Memorials, etc.) but they surely have more than their share and they are beautiful.

The southern portion of Utah is part of what is called the Colorado Plateau and it consists of amazing and colorful rock formations which you have to see to appreciate. Inland lakes and salty oceans once covered the area leaving deposits hundreds of feet thick. Dinosaurs roamed across this area and left tracks and their bones in the mud. The earth was raised up from the pressures within and from plate tectonic action, then it was worn down by water, ice and wind. It took hundreds of millions of years for all this to happen. I can't really grasp 100's of millions of years - can you? At any rate - we now have a geologist's heaven. We often wished we could have our ex-neighbor Mike along with us to explain some of the geology. We've read lots and lots about the formation of ridge or that valley but how they even figured all this out is beyond me! I just enjoyed looking at the rocks.

Our first trip out of Kanab was to Zion, having last been there in 1986. Things have changed! In general we "love our National parks to death" - coming in droves to see them. In 1986 you could drive through the park on your own and I don't recall that it was excessively crowded. Now you must park at the visitor center (or even farther down the road in the next town) and take a free tram through the valley. You can get off and on as you desire at any of the 8-10 key spots on the valley floor. There are trails you can hike from almost every stop, the most popular of which is the hike to the narrows at the far end of the canyon. You may luck out like we did and see climbers scaling the steep canyon walls as you view the canyon walls from the tram. But screw all this talk - let's get to the pictures.

Roadside scenery as we drove to Zion from Kanab.

More scenery on the drive in.
This is petrified sand which has cracked forming a checkerboard pattern.

Heading down some switchbacks to the canyon itself.

Some pretty fantastic rocks hey?

Climbing these rocks must be quite a thrill!

The canyon floor,

Not a sign you see every day - but pay attention to it if the weather is threatening rain.

The Virgin River which cut down through these
rock walls forming the canyon we see today.

Steep red rock walls. The black you see on the walls is called desert varnish.

Our next trip was to Cedar Breaks National Monument. We missed this on our 1986 trip across southern Utah so we wanted to be sure to see it this time. The "Cedar" portion of the name is actually a misnomer. The original settlers in the region mistook the numerous Utah Juniper trees for Cedars. The word Breaks is a geologic term which I just looked up so I could get it right! Geologically it means "a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other." The monument is at an altitude of over 10,000 feet - thus the snow in some of the pictures below.

Just proof that the area was over 10,000 feet high.
That's snow, not rock, under the sign.

It's a bit like Bryce Canyon.

Doesn't the snow add something special to the scene?

Winter quarters for the park rangers. This is a popular cross country skiing area
as well as snowmobiling and someone's got to keep the crazies under control.

So beautiful!

Snow lingers in areas protected from direct sun.

Saw acres and acres of lava on our way to and from Cedar Breaks.

And lastly we drove to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park which is fairly close to Kanab. We'd been here before but because of it's uniqueness, we wanted to see it again. It's a beautiful place, much loved by ATVers who are allowed to run up and down the dunes in portions of the park. There's a nice campground here as well.