Zion National Park and Southern Utah

After a fantastic Labor Day weekend hanging out with old friends and making new friends in Vegas, it's time to continue on our trip.

We left Vegas this morning and headed to Zion National Park with a plan to camp outside of Bryce Canyon National Park. We made it through Zion and decided to camp just before Bryce in the National Forest.

The drive between Las Vegas and Zion was filled with desert scenery and desert mountains. The rock formations and colors that we saw were beautiful. The drive reminded me of Phoenix and the scenery I have missed living out East for the last few years. I forgot the beauty of the desert, however I do think Arizona's desert is more spectacular because Arizona has saguaro cactus. Driving into Zion National Park is cool because you can see it from a distance and the mountains and rock formations become neater and neater the closer we get to the park.

A couple miles outside the park we went through a town called Rockville. It was a nice little touristy town and there were American Flags about every 10 yards on both sides along the road for at least a mile. The sight made both Scott and me proud.

Zion National Park is BEAUTIFUL! The colors were deep reds, oranges, and everything in-between. Zion has desert terrain, canyons, and pine trees. One cool thing about Zion is that in some places the trees and vegetation grow right out of the side of the mountains; Zion calls it hanging gardens. It's amazing because it doesn't seem like anything could grow on the steep, sheer cliff walls, but sure enough nature finds a way. They are cool! We also saw another Ram hanging out on a rock ledge. He was chilling with the red rocks behind him.

Zion National Park

After we left Zion we were back in the pines; awesome. The drive was great between the pine trees and huge meadows. It didn't feel like we were in Utah. It was strange because we had just left this national park with huge rock formations with red and orange colors and now we were driving through deep green pines and meadows. It was such a contrast.

View from out campsite

The location of our campground cannot be beat. We are in a valley surrounded by beautiful red rock formations. Pictures do not even do it justice. The weather is beautiful, most of today we were driving in the high 90's and when we got to our campsite it was in the high 60's. A perfect way to continue our road trip and camping.