Day 14(4/14)
Zion here we come . . .
Not long after leaving Sedona, we were on I-17 heading north toward Flagstaff. When we got above 6000 feet, I noticed that the road surface was washboarded in places. By 7000 feet it was pretty common. No doubt it had to do with the big swing in temperatures from freezing to very hot. On a rural dirt road you’d expect it, but on an interstate highway with big rigs doing 70 MPH?
In Flagstaff we picked up US 89 for the long drive north to Zion NP. The views kept changing with the near by competing with the great vistas in strangeness and beauty. After three hours we were approaching Page, AZ. Peter had told us to go see Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River (though he can’t remember doing so). The turn off to the trailhead is just 2 miles before getting into Page, but we just blew by it. We were hungry and there was a Starbucks in the Safeway. After eating lunch and picking up a few supplies, we stopped at the Glen Canyon Dam a couple miles up the road.
The dam and the visitors center were pretty cool, but looking down stream from the bridge was amazing. The river was 800 to 1000 feet below us. We could only see about a quarter of a mile of it before it turned around a bend, but it was exciting to think that this is the beginning of the Grand Canyon! It was hard to get a feel for Lake Powell. At the dam we could see that the water level was well below the high mark. The reservoir stretches out to the east and highway 89 turns northwest. For the short time we were adjacent to it, the water surface was below us in canyons.
Not far out of Page, we crossed the Utah state line. Having told Chris McKowen that I had read Riders of the Purple Sage last year and that I hoped I‘d see some on this trip (the book takes place in southern Utah), he asked us to take some pictures of it if we did. It didn’t take long. At first there were just clumps among the ground cover, but soon they became more prevalent and by our 5th picture the whole landscape was (would be) Purple Sage. It is still late winter in the higher elevations of the Great Basin and the Purple Sage doesn’t bloom until late summer.
Finally, we turned off on the small road that would lead us to the park. It wound through the barren sandstone mountain tops for twenty something miles and then we got to the park entrance. Not far beyond we drove through a 1.1-mile tunnel and then 1000 feet down the side of a canyon wall on a series of switchbacks. Down on the floor, it didn’t take us long to drive through the park (past the junction that leads to the park’s goodies) and into the town of Springdale where we would be staying.
Our motel was from another era. Built of cinder blocks, probably in the 50s, it belonged to an older couple. I assume that its shabbiness (shabby is being kind) was due to their having stretched things kind of thin to buy the place. The picture on Expedia was not taken in our room. It was a pit and we have a long history of staying in some pretty dodgy dumps. We considered blowing off the four nights charges and seeing if we could get in somewhere else (at twice the price), but figured we could stay one night at least. Which we did after pizza and beer (wine for Connie) in a friendly place a short walk up the road.