Because we unexpectedly drove 200 miles last evening, we had a more reasonable drive headed down I-15 towards Zion National Park. We checked out of our hotel, had a nice breakfast at Denny’s and then were off.
We got through Salt Lake City and through many of the other larger and smaller cities and towns along I-15. We made the whole drive with the Wasatch Mountains on the left. As we reached the southern part of our travels we could see dark storm clouds over the mountains. It was easy to see that there was serious rain already falling.
We made very good time, and so arrived being able to stop at a much lesser known part of Zion National Park: Kolob Canyons. This is an area that we had driven by many times as we had traveled Interstate 15 and always thought “someday, we should stop and check that out.“ So, today was the day. We stopped in and had a nice chat with the volunteer who was giving information at the visitor center. We had hoped we might get an a small hike, but the volunteer agreed that the storm was blowing in, and we would be best off to more do the scenic drive up the mountain.
It was a scenic drive indeed, with very beautiful rock formations, some classic Utah red sandstone, And beautiful pull outs where we could get out and admire the lovely views.
As we got to the top overlook area, we could see the storm clouds really rolling in from the north. We had a chance to chat with a couple local people who gave us a great recommendation of another area to hike the next day. As we were watching, we could see the rains moving over the cliffs across the canyon and the lightning and hear the thunder. We decided to pop into our car just as the rain started really coming down. We watched it for a while, enjoying the thunderstorm. In San Diego, we have all too few opportunities to experience a good rain. And almost never a thunderstorm. We drove carefully down the mountain and out of this area hoping to return again someday to go on the lovely hikes available there.
We had gotten away from the rain and drove another half hour or so to our Airbnb home for a couple of nights in La Verkin, just outside of the main Zion National Park entrance. There, we met our hosts, Valerie and Paul, who have been Airbnb hosts for a couple of years and really enjoy sharing their home. They told us they treated their guest like family, and they really did. Over the next two days we would have an opportunity to chat with them and especially hear some of Paul’s stories and experiences having been a structural engineer working on many interesting projects around the world.
We headed off to bed knowing the next day would be a fun one enjoying Zion National Park.
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