Zion - Where God Would Build His Summer Home

In the words of Calvin and Hobbs, "the days are just packed."  I seriously do not know where all my time is going.  Well, it's going a lot to hiking, taking photos, and waiting patiently (hard for me, mind you!) for wildlife to come along.  Hopefully you see all these as being beneficial to you in the form of photos.  I think it's a great use of MY time.  

So Zion is choice real estate.  Thankfully it is a National Park, otherwise it would probably look like most other beautiful places - marred by housing additions and Walmart.  As it stands, it is an absolute testament to the natural world's beauty.  The neat thing is that the park has decided to implement a free shuttle system in order to cut down on pollution and traffic.  You can actually cross the street in the park without fearing for your life!  You can also see wildlife on the sides of the road without 80 cars pulled over and 350 Japanese tourists getting their photo in front of each deer (a la Yellowstone NP)!  I am wicked impressed.  We managed to do several hikes while we were staying in the National Park lodge, and also managed to spend a day going thru the galleries and shops in the next town over.  We ate at a restaurant touted by our Fodor's guide to be the best food just outside of the park on that evening, and it certainly didn't disappoint.  We ate on the patio and their grounds looked like some kind of landscaped city park.  Even the birds were impressed, and we got to see several hummingbirds while we ate (no photos, my soup was way too good to take a photo break).  

Now we are staying in a hotel between Bryce Canyon NP and Grand Staircase Escalante NM.  Went into Bryce on our way thru to the hotel and took lots of pictures.  It was so cold!  It was in the 50's, overcast, sprinkling and 30 mph wind!  After being in Zion in 80 degrees it felt like walking into a windy deep-freeze.  The rain clouds made a striking contrast with the reddish orange rock, as you will see in the next post.  I know, I'm a terribly tease when it comes to photos.  It's called building suspense, okay?

So back to Zion.  We saw so many cool animals.  There were many encounters with neat birds, including a very striking Yellow Warbler you might see in the next post, lizards, a snake, squirrels, chipmunks and a ton of mule deer.  Today on our way out of the park we saw a Mountain Sheep and then several Pronghorns in Bryce.  The two notable animal encounters, in my opinion, are both in the photos below.  We got to see a squirrel eat a caterpillar (I leave you with one of the least graphic photos, the others might turn you off stringy food forever) and a lizard take down and wail on some kind of worm before dragging it home for dinner.  So fascinating.  Doc is loving the Geology, of course, and we stopped at two rock shops today alone.  Happy Father's Day, Doc!  Mom and I didn't even complain.