Zion Day 8

What do you get if you combine a 3-day holiday weekend with gorgeous weather and add it to a spectacular National Park?...............A ZOO!

It started calmly enough, with just one early riser at the Angels landing trailhead at 7:30am, a few more trickled in at 8am; a steady stream at 9am; by 10am the banks are full and I decide to get out of the canyon and go shopping for some groceries in town.

Because that’s what you’re supposed to do in a flash flood….get out of the canyon, whether the flood is storm run-off or in this case hordes of people.

   I left the park by 11am and it looked like going against rush hour in Dallas, a steady wave of cars heading into the Park. (Well maybe not Dallas, but probably like San Angelo, or maybe Wichita Falls rush hour)

Regardless, I decided it was a great time to stock up on some items while everyone else in Utah parks on my lawn.

Hurricane is the larger town where you can get a grocery store and gas station with reasonable prices.

It is a beautiful drive out of the canyon and the 20 miles to Hurricane, unfortunately I didn’t take any photos, (my bad) but it really was pretty, you should see it.

I passed several cyclists which is like the call of the wild to me. I itched to be riding in a group out there amongst that pretty view I just described.

I passed a small group of four cyclists(they were heading towards the Park) hitting the pace pretty hard and laboring, they were about a hundred yds in front of a group of about twenty and they were all dressed in similar club jerseys, so this was the Saturday club ride and these guys were putting the hammer down on the group(aka G.Phillips). Just past the bigger group, were some single stragglers all looking fatigued and fighting to catch the each other, this all looks very familiar for some reason. I soon found out what happened, I started down this looooong downhill. Not extremely steep but about three miles long and 6-7 percent. I knew exactly what split the group now and the call of the wild got really loud. We would have to go to Ft. Davis or Big Bend to get hills like this, and I’m sure every Saturday it happens like this.

I need to get my bike out of the truck.

I shopped and got gas and came back to the Park about 2:30pm and the banks were full and actually overflowed into my area around the Grotto, the nerve of these people.

People were picnicking and enjoying the weather and I went inside to paint.

Then, at 3pm, the tide shifted, the stream started flowing the other way. By 3:30pm there were parking spots available, by 4pm it was within the banks, 4:30pm just a trickle, at 5:30pm it’s empty. Awesomely quiet ,…. but you should see what they did to my lawn.

Tomorrow should be the same so I will photo the parking lot so you can see.

I realized at about 5pm that I did not have any photos for the blog and I know I would catch grief if there is no visual eye-candy. So I went out and took a couple of scenes to satisfy the six people following this blog. Thank you Mom.