They are redoing the road into Zion so it was slow going and one way traffic on parts of it. There are a couple of tunnels on the way in, one wasn’t very long, maybe 200 yards or so, but the other one was a little over a mile long. These tunnels had been constructed back in the ‘30s and were quite an engineering feat.
We parked the truck at the visitor’s center and rode the shuttle all thru the canyon. We got off at a couple of places and hiked back into some marked trails. We had packed some sandwiches, apples and water for lunch which we ate along the side of the Virgin River that runs thru the canyon. I really enjoyed this day much better than yesterday because of the altitude.
I had a lot of trouble breathing yesterday in the thin air, but today we were in the bottom, so it was quite comfortable. It was rather warm, I guess it was about 85 in the canyon. Parts of the canyon were in the shade and really comfortable, when you rounded a bend and got in the sun, it was quite warm. They are predicting 92 for tomorrow in the area where we are camped. One lady told us it had been hotter in September than all of August.
Some of you may say “too much information” after the next story, but we thought it was kind of interesting to watch. They had a couple of hiking areas closed today. There were septic tank trucks and a helicopter sitting at one trail head area which was near the road. The helicopter would fly up to the other area which was not accessible by any kind of vehicle, hook onto the septic tank and bring it down to be cleaned out, then fly the emptied tank back up. The bus driver said the tanks were supposed to be some expensive tanks that were not supposed to have to be cleaned and would not damage the environment, but they hadn’t worked out as planned. So, the helicopter is only costing $500 an hour to empty the relief station on the way to Angles Landing.
We have been amazed at the number of foreign visitors in all the parks. There are numerous tour buses with European and Asian visitors. It almost seems they outnumber the Americans. We have run into people from Germany, France, Netherlands, England, Israel, Japan and Australia. These are just the ones we are certain of, I’m sure there are other countries represented as well.
In this campground we have several over the air TV channels and pretty good internet service. We do not have phone service though. Phone service has been spotty for a while, as we go over the mountains, but here in this valley it has been non-existent.
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