Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

I believe the word whoa just may be universal. It didn't matter what language was being spoken--German, Italian, French, Japanese, and of course, English--this word (usually heard in three times in succession) was heard often at the Grand Canyon. This morning as we navigated the last of the south rim, Tim and I heard it several different times. It had a slight variation on the accent, but the sentiment was always the same...whoa, that's a long way down; whoa, that's a big hole, but most often...whoa, whoa, whoa as one got a bit too close to the edge.

After our last few eyefuls of the canyon, we drove east around the big hole, into Navajo Nation, through the Painted Desert, around Lake Powell and Vermilion Cliffs, and finally, to Zion National Park. Each place added a new sight, a new landscape, to our unbelievable catalog of new and different ecosystems.

The Painted Desert had sand dunes upon sand dunes that had been bonded together to make hills that were pink, orange, gray and brown, sometimes in the same hill. Lake Powell was different from any other lake we have seen because of the red rock and cliffs that surrounded it. The water was a deep sapphire blue--beautiful. The Vermilion Cliffs (these are Tim's words) are like billboards in Missouri. These red-pink cliffs seemed to pop out of nowhere. There were rows and rows of them--some rising as high as a thousand feet. The strangest thing about these three very different places was that they all appeared within approximately two hundred miles of each other.

The pot of gold, Zion National Park, was at the end of this rainbow. While the Grand Canyon's expanse was difficult to judge, the canyon in Zion is almost intimate. Don't get me wrong, it's huge--towering red rock (and the "whiteness" if you will, of The Great White Throne) surrounds you on all sides. The ability to be at the bottom of the canyon in under an hour makes it accessible--unlike the Grand Canyon.

Zion is steeped in Mormon history. One stretch of the park is accessible only by shuttle bus. There are stops along the way to view places like The Three Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) with Mt. Moroni in the foreground. There is, as mentioned above, also a monolith named the Great White Throne. There were several stops on the way to the final trail--the Riverside Walk. This trail, only a mile long, led us to the beginning of the end, the Narrows. At this point the "trail" ends and you start walking through the river at the bottom of the canyon. Even at the beginning of this area, you could feel the walls of the canyon begin to close in. We did get our feet wet, so officially, we can say we hiked the Narrows.

On the shuttle ride back to the visitor's center, a young man had hiked the Narrows most of the day. He told us about places where you had to stand sideways to walk between the canyon walls--that's how close together they got. Tim and I both would liked to have hiked this section of the canyon; however we were not prepared (with enough time or the right equipment) to do so. Molly, I can see why you suggested we come to this place.

Today, we need to do laundry one last time. After that we are headed to Bryce Canyon National Park. There are hoodoos there. (Look it up!)