Ascending Zion

"Zion's first residents tracked mammoths, camels, and other mammals through open desert and sheltered canyons.  With climate change, disease, and overhunting, these animals died out 8,000 years ago."

Fast forward through eight millenia of climate change-related, ever-diminishing human possibilities to die of "natural causes" before reaching old age, and we now have adventure seekers climbing the sheer cliffs as an adrenalin rush for lifestyles so comfortable that they needlessly flirt with death just to feel alive.

Julie and I parked our Ford Escape at the base of a mountain and prepared to ascend the crevices without hammer, pitons or even safety rope.

Okay, we didn't intend to ascend using only nerve and the strength of our gripping fingers and toeholds but rather by riding on a bus.  Still, that was rigorous in its own way.

There were a bunch of navy-and-gold-lettered-"Cal"-sweatshirt-clad college kids calling cacaphonously back and forth in a manner quite disturbing to anyone trying to listen to the recorded narrative about Zion that played as we careened wildly between dangerous hairpin turns. Actually, to be a bit more accurate, the old bus driver was steering cautiously at 25 miles per hour, but the road did gently curve from side to side.

Though not even moderately uncomfortable in any long-term historical context, we tried to escape the din at Zion Human History Museum to watch a movie that would flesh out the free map's description quoted above (yeah, they wrote more history on the map, but who am I supposed to be, Evelyn Wood?).  Sensing our plan, the bus driver warned us that the movie didn't start until 10 AM, so with heads hung down we returned to our seats.

It gave me the opportunity to read a quote from 1895 presumably about Zion (since it was printed in large letters on its guide map) by John Wesley Powell, a guy I'd never heard of but whose middle name inexplicably intrigued me. 

"All this is the music of waters."

"Yes, John Wesley," I waned to reply, "you were about as vague as I tend to be."

Those college kids didn't get any quieter, and because they had spoken over the recording telling them food and drink other than water was prohibited on board, the smell of peanuts and granola bars became thick in the air.

Despite the fact that I had enjoyed a tasty free breakfast of biscuits and gravy plus freshly-made waffles with sugarfree syrup at the comfortable St. George Inn and Suites where we'd spent the prior night, the aroma was nonetheless making me hungry, so we exited again at the Zion Inn, one stop earlier than we originally intended.

We hiked along the Grotto Trail, past a reflective pond, to the ambidextrous-gender restroom --- where did sexually-challenged cave men of Zion use the bathroom?  Hopefully the movie would cover the answer to that ancient dilemma later --- before crossing to the even more scenic but decidedly uphill Emerald Pools Trail.

When we started our ascent, it had been cold enough for jackets, but soon the desert sun's rays began to heat up the trail, and by halfway up we had our jackets tied around our waists.

Plants, including some with unlikely flowers as well as cacti and trees, grew through the rocky terrain, testament to Wes Powell's metaphor of water's music.

The Virgin River not only carved magnificent Zion over the millenia but also opened the passage from Utah through Arizona and into Mesquite, Nevada, making Zion potentially an easy seven-hour drive from Los Angeles once the paved highway was added.

But the music is also in the water captured by the mountain tops that seeps down through sandstone until it hits rock strata hardened by nature hundreds of thousands of years ago, redirecting it through hidden fissures to seep out as weeping trickles or full waterfalls that irrigate the otherwise unforgiving ground or fill Zion's "Emerald Pools."

While not as challenging as the climb of those daredevils who appear to be colorful ants scaling the flat mountainsides of even higher peaks, our roundtrip hike of about 5 miles (according to Julie's iPhone step counter, which I think may be a bit newer than the technology used by wooly mammoths before they became extinct), the hike to the Upper Emerald Pool and back exhausted us, even if I'm a trifle embarrassed to say that some older people seemed to have no trouble making the same hike.

We toughed it out and then rode the bus to the last stop in the park, getting off a couple of times along the way just to say we did, and then went back to watch the movie about Zion.

The flick wasn't nearly as epic as the Kevin Costner-hosted one we saw on a wide screen at Custer State Park in South Dakota, but it was worth watching, as well as being a good excuse to rest inside the cool theater.

Many people on the bus were in Zion for extended stays that allowed them to hike different trails each day.  For us, however, Zion was a stopover on the drive home from Montana.  With my Senior National Parks Pass, we can go there any time we get the yen, even if the last time we visited Zion was over twenty years ago on a family trip.

By the way, annual passes for people under age 62 cost less than $100 and cover admission for a carload of people, and a lifetime pass is only $10 for people 62 and older.

Within the park you can pay for camping sites as well as the more comfortable Zion Lodge.

Other hotels and RV parks are available on the road from St. George as well as in that Interstate 15 hugging town that serves as the gateway to Zion.

There's also a wide variety of fast food and sitdown restaurants in St. George.

The prior night we had walked to Black Bear Diner across the parking from our hotel for dinner upon recommencation by the front desk clerk.  I particularly enjoyed the Pecan Crusted Trout with mashed red potatoes and garden vegetables.

Speaking of which, we were getting hungry, because it was past noon by the time we started watching the movie, so we headed back toward St. George for lunch before racing home to California.

As we tried to leave the park, a cargo truck's driver found himself having trouble fitting into a parking lot.

Back and forth his truck went for ten minutes, blocking traffic in both directions until finally squeezing in.

That was just the first of several frustrations in our drive.

When we got off the freeway in St. George after being tricked by a sign for Arby's (always a treat in Utah, for some reason), we found ourselves deceived into back-tracking what seemed like 150 miles  --- well, more like 2 miles, but they were "country miles" even if we were in the city --- and then receiving the slowest service in the history of any Arby's.  

Finally fed and heading for home, we got lost trying to take a shortcut back to the freeway, resulting in a tour through about every street in St. George, taking us past our hotel and the Black Bear Diner, which was two offramps away from Arby's, before getting back on the freeway.

We should have taken that as an omen to spend one more night, because the worst was yet to come.

In Las Vegas, we still managed to arrive on schedule at 3 PM, well before rush hour traffic, but unfortunately encountered a few of those all-too-frequent jams caused by roadwork, accidents caused by roadwork slowdowns, and accidents caused by accidents caused by roadwork slowdowns.

Still, we made it to the other side of Vegas not too much the worse for wear.

We pulled off to visit a not-so-convenient Arco station which holds the advantage of being outside of the city center.

While there, we decided to take advantage of a slow day at their car wash to rinse off the schmutz accumulated in our spring skiing road trip, adding that to the gas charge.

After getting some coffee and using the facilities, we came back to find that there was now a long line at the car wash, but we had paid $5.99, so what could we do?

Yes, we could leave and write it off, but if you think that's how Julie and I roll, you don't know us at all.

After enterring California on I-15 out of Nevada, we hit the mother of all traffic jams, as our fine Cal Trans workers shut down two of the three southbound lanes for two miles.

John Wesley "Wes" Powell, Explorer

This somehow translated into two and a half hours  for us to cover those two miles, only to eventually pass about 100 yards of idle road-working equipment and a perfectly good shoulder which could have been used as a temporary second lane that would have made that stretch far less torturous.

As my good friend John Wesley Powell might have said if he lived today, "All this is the discord of the traffic."

While the trip from Zion that ideally would have taken seven hours ended up at eleven hours plus, including gas and meal stops, that is still much faster than riding a camel.

And I should mention another highlight before we hit more slow and go traffic from Victorville to Redondo: Tuesday is "Barstow Taco" Night at Del Taco in...you guessed it...Barstow, and those tacos turned out to be extra large and tasty.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy getting on a cruise ship and letting the captain do the driving while I take dance lessons, eat fine meals and attend concerts?