Taste of Zion

 

Taste of Zion

As a personal note, I have wanted to visit Zion National Park for several years.  It never seemed to work out during our travels, because Zion is in the southwest corner of Utah, and we weren’t ever in that area.  This year, we made a point of visiting it, and we were both amazed at how different the rock formations, etc., were when compared to Bryce, Arches, etc. 

All of the natural beauty of Zion is due to Zion’s geology.  Over the past 300 million years, Zion has had an incredible variety of different environments, including tropical seas, sand dune deserts, lakes, rivers and swamps!  Of course, the road we traveled on didn’t indicate any of that to us, since neither of us are geologists!!

Zion is actually a small park. At 230 square miles, it’s 1/8 the size of the Grand Canyon.  However, I began to think of it as small, but mighty.  The rock formation textures are amazing, and what totally surprised both Jeff and I were all the trees growing out of the rocks!!

Some of the really grand formations are still in the making.  The upper image seems to be an amphitheater or cave starting to form.  You can see it if you look toward the left center of the back of the canyon it now sits in.  The bottom image reminded me of the shape of the arches we saw at Arches National Park.  I think the rock is too thick for this to eventually become an arch, so maybe another amphitheater or cave?

I don’t know what caused this, but a number of the tops of the immense rock walls were white, and not from snow!!  They offered a very nice contrast to the red rocks and green trees.

Isn’t this cool?  I happened to look up just as a jet was leaving a contrail, seemingly heading directly toward one of the rock walls!

I just wanted to share the road through what I call the Taste of Zion area.  We are winding our way through huge rock formations and walls.  In many areas there are pull-off areas where you could pull off to get out of your car (or Jeep!) and take in the view.  However, for whatever reason, when we were there, it was really crowded, so we couldn’t do that.  I know, it doesn’t look busy in this image, but I worked at getting the empty road feel!!

I love the look of layers in the rocks shown in the image on the right!  Again, the trees are growing out of the rocks!!  If you look at the image on the left in the lower portion of the image, you’ll see a sort of semi-circle cut-out.  It could be a cave, but it’s not!  It’s actually a window!!  On the other side of the window, is a mile long tunnel through the rocks that we needed to drive through get in and out of Zion.  That window is even cooler in my view, when you know there’s a tunnel in all that rock!!

This image gives you a really good feel for how it felt to drive on the road through Zion in a lot of places.  I have no idea how tall those rock walls are!!  Rock climbers really like Zion for obvious reasons!  We didn’t see any climbing, but we did see several walking along the side of the road to get to their “spot”.  I’m sure that’s why the pull-over spots are very full in some places!!

Here are some close-up views of some of the natural texture of the rocks.  The image on the left is actually called the “Checkerboard”.  You can see why!  And, it’s all due to how nature kept changing the landscape of Zion.

And here’s a tunnel that we needed to drive through.  I don’t think it’s the mile-long tunnel, but I am using it to illustrate the fact that we did need to drive through a tunnel to enter and leave Zion.

But, even when you technically “leave” Zion, the beautiful scenery doesn’t stop!  The road to Zion from the east, which is the way we entered it, is called East Zion, and the views are impressive in their own right!!

Enjoy!!