Epic. — An Elegant Sufficiency

Running out of superlatives here (but have still got “awesome” up my sleeve)

We love this wide open countryside and I can’t really get a grip of how enormous this land is. How far away are those distant hills? When we look at our route and see “left turn in 39 miles”, that’s like saying “turn left at Bristol”…

This was scrubby desert once more, with little sign of habitation here in northern Arizona. Actually, it’s hard to know what people would do for a living here – it’s not exactly the most hospitable landscape, nor is it productive, it seems.

Fredonia was the first community we came to on our journey today, right on the border with Utah. That huge butte is a great landmark, isn’t it?

No sooner were we into Utah, than the rock formations started getting interesting. Yet more different characteristics in the sandstone, here the layers were curved and wave-like.

The surface textures were beautiful, fine layers etched into the rock face with green vegetation setting off the creamy colour well.

By the time we were arriving in Zion National Park the oohs and aaahs were on both sides of the road and the two of us who were not driving the car were finding it hard to know on which side to look. These monumental rock faces were full of character and every turn in the road revealed a new and different one.

Having booked rooms at the Lodge, we had the privilege of driving right down into the canyon and the nearer we got, the more we were looking forward to getting out there and seeing it all up close.

But by now it was 109F! Not the best weather to be exploring a rocky canyon, but the shuttle bus made it easy and of course, the buildings were air conditioned, too.

Here, at the Court of the Patriarchs, those three peaks (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) towered over us as we hopped off the bus for fifteen minutes or so, to take photographs and simply take it all in. In no time, we were getting back on the next shuttle and travelling further into the canyon. The efficient service made seeing all the best bits incredibly easy in spite of the soaring temperature.

Of course, as ever, getting the scale of these rock faces was difficult.

I took a picture of this arch from the bus stop, thinking it didn’t look that huge, until we drove past and I realised that the whole bus could have parked in there with plenty of room to spare!

And once again, since we’re staying in the park, we were able to watch the sun begin to go down and as everyone else drove out of the park, we walked along to dinner and gazed upwards again.