Day 22 – Saturday, May 21

Today we took the road east out of Zion National Park.  This road goes through a tunnel.  If you drive a car, you probably don’t think much about tunnels, but if you drive a tall motor home, it’s more of a concern.  The tunnel that you go through from Zion is 13’ 1” tall at the middle and 11’ 7” tall at the sides.  We are more than 11’ 7”, so if we tried to drive through the normal way, we’d scrape the roof off on the passenger side.  

Fortunately, there is a solution for this.  If you want to go through in a motor home, you pay a fee.  Then, when you get to the tunnel, the ranger radios to the other side and the ranger on the other side stops traffic.  When it is clear, he tells you that you can go and drive down through the middle of the tunnel.  It was really cool going through the tunnel down the center stripe.  This wasn’t just a little simple tunnel, either.  It was 1.1 miles long and had several curves in it.  Dad led the way and we had several cars following us.  When we got through, they let people go again from the other side.  It’s cool to be special and lead a parade.

Mom and Dad on the rim at Bryce Canyon

View from the rim at Bryce Canyon

We got to Bryce Canyon National Park about 1:00.  Mom and Dad took the shuttle into the park.  I’ll save you the soap box speech, but you know what I’m thinking.  They went to the Visitor Center to get information and then to Bryce Point.  They walked the rim trail for 1.5 miles and then decided that they wanted to go into the canyon.  They decided to take the Queens Garden Trail into the canyon and then connect to the Navajo Trail and come out through Wall Street.  The rim trail was pretty level, but the loop they took had a 600 foot elevation change (down and back up) and was a total of 3 miles.  They said that it was really neat to get down into the canyon and see all the hoodoos.  They particularly liked Wall Street, which was a slot canyon.

Getting down to the level of the Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon

"Wall Street" at Bryce Canyon

Looking up at the Hoodoos in Bryce Canyon

They came back to me and had dinner and then went to use the hot tub at the campground.  They said that after all the hiking they have done the last few days, it felt really good.