Alaska Bound and Zion National Park

Our plan was to stay and help as long as we are needed with Denise’s brother passing and her mom in the hospital.  Her mom is now back to her home from the hospital and is now under hospice care and her family is slowly getting back to their normal lives. It is time to leave.  Plus the temperature is getting into the triple digits in Palm Springs.

So, this is the start of our “RV trip of a lifetime”, we are headed to Alaska.  We have two constraints; don’t drive in snow and don’t drive more than 300 miles a day.

Many of the roads that we took out of California and Arizona, we have traveled before and was familiar to us.  We spent the night in Parker, Arizona, not far from Lake Havasu, right on the Colorado River.  We have been here several times and we keep coming back.  From here we are going to Las Vegas to hit I-15 north to Utah.  We plan to spend a week to 10 days in Utah.

Our first stop is Zion National Park. What an awesome day!  First off, the park was very busy.  Saturday was Earth Day and then Sunday was National Park day.   The lady park ranger said that they had 35,000 visitors on Friday.  Many must still be here today. Anyway, I used my senior National Park pass and we got in free, saved $30. Even thought there was a lot of people at the visitors center, it didn’t seem all that busy and there were no lines.  We took the free shuttle service through the scenic part of the park.  There was nine stops and we visited each one of them. Each stop had plenty to see and trails to explore.

At the 5th stop, Denise wanted to hike to the upper waterfall pool that was a couple of miles UP the side of a mountain. In the guide, the hike was classified as a moderate hike.  In reality it was a little more difficult than moderate. It was a strenuous couple hours. But we were very glad we did it. The view was breath-taking.

When we got done with the scenic shuttle, we drove around and went through a small tunnel that was 1.1 mile long carved out many years ago.  Traffic was only allowed in one direction at a time. There was no lights or ventilation system.  Just a hole through the mountain.  Pretty cool.