WooHoo!

Saturday, May 11th

Living just 27 miles from the east entrance and having senior passes makes visiting Zion 'a walk in the park'--literally! Yesterday, for our second day off, we returned to  hike the East Rim trail as far as Jolley Gulch, about 6.2 miles for the round-trip.  The route parallels a wash then gradually switchbacks to the top of a mesa.  After a heavy rain, a seasonal stream plunges 200 feet from the mesa's edge into a narrow canyon.  Although we found several small pools in rocks at the ledge, recent rains obviously haven't been sufficient to create the waterfall.  A pleasant but not spectacular hike.  Not many wildflowers; the only variety we hadn't already seen was fringed gromwell.

Scenes along Zion's East Rim Trail:

 

 

 

 

 

 



The schedule for the next two weeks was posted today: we work four days the first week and three the second. Under those circumstances, being on the job at 6 AM isn't all that bad.

 

 

Looking into Jolley Gulch from East Rim Trail

 





 

 

 



Checkerboard Mesa

The surface of this immense Navajo sandstone monolith is scored  by unexpectedly uniform rectangles resulting from crossbedding (horizontal lines) and stress and erosion forces (vertical lines).

 



The schedule for the next two weeks was posted today: we work four days the first week and three the second. Under those circumstances, being on the job at 6 AM isn't all that bad.

First Day Off

Thursday, May 9th

Without the pressure of reporting to work at 6 AM, we were able to attend an interesting talk at the Kanab library last evening.  To bring attention to conservation and preservation issues,  a young man is hiking, biking, skiing and paddling along the spine of North America from Mexico to Canada.  The focus in this area is to construct tunnels under Highway 89 between Kanab and Page so wildlife can cross without endangering themselves or drivers.

We drove from the RV to Zion's visitor center in less than an hour this morning, hopped on the shuttle and headed up the Angel's Landing trail.  It seemed longer and harder in 2011 than it did today.  Back then we didn't get much beyond Scout Lookout.  Fred went farther than I did and I went farther than the first time.  We met Meryl and George, a friendly couple from Illinois who are spending a month in the area and anxious to find good hikes.

Fred wore his new GoPro helmet cam and received a number of thumbs up and 'cool' comments from other hikers, particularly the young ones.  The video of his climb toward Angel's Landing is pretty scary!  After doing some editing , he'll post it on Youtube.  The link to Fred's video is http://youtu.be/YxPQFA69mU0

An (unflattering) picture of Jan on the trail to Angel's Landing

 

What a Day!

Monday, May 6th

First off, we caught our first--and not likely our only--critter of the season, a little mouse foolish enough to invade our space.  Not a great way to start the day...

When we got to work (at 6 AM), Diane looked awful; she probably had the same stomach bug which tackled Roland on Friday.  We convinced her to go home; we could handle the desk.  The next shift reported at 3:00 so we not only 'flew without a safety net,' we put in a 9-hour day.  The situation gave us a lot of practice and having to figure things out on our own made the day a valuable learning experience.  I just hope we don't have to work 9 hours tomorrow!

We rested at home for a couple of hours and then drove to Kanab to walk around town.  Crossing the parking lot we found a wallet containing a lot of crisp, large denomination bills and several credit cards issued by a Dutch or German
bank, obviously a tourist's vacation funds.  Determined to do the right thing, we walked to the town police station.  And discoverd it closes at 5 PM daily.  However, a sign on the door directed us to the sheriff's office several blocks away.  The man sweeping the entry there informed us that the office had moved 'out near the reservoir' and gestured vaguely south.  A stop at the customer service desk in the grocery store helped us deteremine the new location, several miles out of town.  We arrived and entered a deserted lobby.  A phone on the counter connected to a dispatcher who sent an officer to retrieve the wallet from us.  He said he'd give it to a town policeman tomorrow.  Hopefully tourist and wallet will be reunited successfully.