We left Vegas around 10am, headed for the southern Utah National Parks.  First one on the list was Zion, about 3 hours northeast.  JC had told us that we should hike up the canyon, but when we got there, MAN was it crowded!  There was essentially no parking at the visitor’s center or trailhead, so we just drove on through.  Very nice scenery, though.

 The only place we've seen Orthodox Jews is Zion NP... coincidence???

Next stop was Bryce Canyon NP, a couple hours (through some gorgeous country) from Zion.  Besides the still-gorgeous scenery Bryce was a big contrast to Zion.  Not crowded, and very comfortable.  We got there around 6, found a campsite pretty easily, and did some laundry.  Bryce wins the award for most laid-back national park (so far, at least)… they even gave me a second hot dog at the general store for free!

A rain shower passed through as we got back to the campsite, so we had to sit in the truck for a while.  Then we cooked dinner (bacon, eggs, potatoes, and onions… it took way too long on the camp stove) and went to bed.  There was more rain that night and a bit right at daylight (Day 6, by the way) but I got out of the tent after it left and the weather was gorgeous… partly cloudy, breezy, and about 65 degrees.  It felt like deer hunting weather.  We took down the camp, went to the general store to start some more laundry, then went sightseeing.

Bryce is a car-friendly park, but not drive-through like Zion is.  It’s basically a bunch of viewpoints connected by an 18-mile-long dead-end road.  Our strategy was to drive to the end of the road, then sightsee our way back.  This worked pretty well, except that it made our last stop Inspiration Point.  The cool thing about Bryce Canyon is all the hoodoos --  little towers of rock that have been eroded away -- and Inspiration Point has about ten times the hoodoos as any other viewpoint.  If you go to Bryce (and if, like us, you can’t hike), don’t worry about the rest of the viewpoints… just go see Inspiration Point.  Very impressive.

 

 We also saw pronghorns very close to the road.

We left Bryce Canyon around 2pm, very surprised that we had spent about 20 hours at that one park.  Drove up to Capitol Reef NP, which was another gorgeous drive.  Somebody once told me that they should just make all of southern Utah one big national park… I can see why.  

Capitol Reef NP was (and still is) the park I knew the least about.  For instance, I’m still not sure why it’s called Capitol Reef.  It has basically two roads: one that runs through the north edge of the park and another that runs down into the park and dead-ends.  The dead-end road was under construction, and because of that and a lack of time, we decided to just drive through.  Saw some spectacular stuff just doing that… makes me wonder what was down that road.  

See that sunlit rock in the background?  That's Capitol Reef (I think).

Probably the most interesting was the wall paintings... mostly done by the Indians, but with a few modern (and ugly) additions.  The only dates I could read on them were 1929 and 1937, though, which were both before the place was federally protected.

  

We had planned to camp that night at or near Arches NP, which we still had plenty of time to get to.  We hit I-15 (first interstate driving since Day 2), which runs through a big expansive sagebrush prairie with a really long view.  Up ahead we saw scattered rainstorms, with occasional lightning.  We decided to try camping in Canyonlands NP (north side) instead, because it wasn’t so far east, but after we had turned off the highway and were driving westward to it, we noticed a huge storm to the southwest that had snuck up behind us.  So we decided that camping wasn’t in the cards, and we’d just find a hotel in Moab instead.  

Moab reminds me of a tiny version of Bend, Oregon.  High, dry, and very outdoor-oriented and touristy.  It’s only 3 miles south of the entrance to Arches, NP, so I guess that’s where you stay if Arches is your destination.  We tried a few hotels before finding one that was pet-friendly and had a vacancy, and ended up with a nice room at the Comfort Inn.  Dropped off Daisy, had some good authentic Mexican food (and margaritas) at Miguel’s Baja Grill, watched some lightning off in the distance, then called it a night.