The Travelers Two: Zion South

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Zion South

It really is beautiful up here. Kinda has a Smoky Mountain look to it. See how the mountain range just goes on and on? That's what fooled the pioneers. The Smoky and the Appalachia and other eastern ranges were just a row of north to south ranges, up and over and you were done. Out west, the peaks seem endless. Wave after wave of mountains as far as the eye could see - north, south, east and west - to cross. If you were late arriving and there was an early snowfall, it could be the death of you!

It's not too much of a drive at all down to Hurricane, Utah and over to the south entrance of Zion National Park. Now we're down looking up.

See the buses at the lower right corner? This entrance leads into a box canyon - one road in, one road out. In the summertime it gets jam-packed with tourists, so the Park requires folks to take a bus. This is off-season, so we get to drive our own vehicle. I like.

This river is the reason the wildlife like this canyon so much. The Virgin River begins up the mountain aways in an underground cavern. Melting snow provides the water. As you can imagine, it's a whole lot bigger in the Spring than it is just before the winter snowfall. Animals like mountain lion, elk, deer, even a black bear or two can be found at the higher elevation. Birds including Peregrine falcon also inhabit the canyon.

At the lower, desert-like elevation you'll find tarantulas and desert tortoise. There used to be as many as 200 tortoise per square mile. Now they say due to human encroachment, there are only about 20. (I just can't believe that these animals, who have survived every calamity imaginable from volcanoes to drought to flood could be near extinction because of mankind. There just aren't that many of us living in the desert ... and the tortoise is very are adaptable.)

We have very vague memories of our first visit here, very vague. There's a place up the canyon a ways that you can cross the creek and walk up to a scenic spot. That we remember. But I think that that's where we turned around the last time, so we never got to the "box" part of the canyon.

Granpa spots a deer. He gets out of the car to get a better photo. I decide to step out of the car to get a cell phone picture. From the bushes between Granpa and I a buck steps out.

He turns toward me. He steps very slowly and cautiously. He doesn't seem to be particularly nervous or threatening, so I close the car door and stand very, very still. He comes closer and closer.