Cokie, Kae and I are off to see the rest of the Colorado Plateau and the National Parks that Valda had recommended. She wanted us to visit these for her since she had run out of vacation even though she had stayed four extra days and stretched her vacation into two full weeks. Nice of her Boss Cheryl to be so understanding and generous, I thought.
Leaving the North Rim of the Grand Canyon we headed up Hwy. 67 on our way to Zion National Park. However, along the way we read about Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. I figured coral pink was probably one of the colors we may not have seen enough of and besides Utah must be pretty proud to make a whole state park out of it! The fact that there acres and acres of enormous sand dunes in this area is caused by an unusual wind velocity influence called the Venturi Affect. Seems the wind speeds up when passing through a steep notch between two mountains, picks up sand and carries it miles until the wind enters this valley where it slows down and drops the grains. The other unusual thing in this park is that 1200 acres have been set aside for off-highway vehicles. Guess you know it wasn’t one of the quietest places we had ever been in.
Zion National Park, now this was one of the best campground we have been in, so far, because of several things: the Campground Hosts were a great retired couple with a big black Shepard named Teton; the Virgin River ran right next to the campground with a long, paved, easy trail; Cokie took me on lots of walks and the Hosts said they wouldn’t notice if I sorta slid into the river every once in a while. Dog heaven! There is an amazing one and a quarter mile long tunnel blasted through a mountain at the east entrance. I dislike most tunnels because they make me duck and I’m always looking for the sky which isn’t there, of course. If I can see sunlight at the other end, I’m okay but this tunnel went on forever. I think I threw my neck out before we got out it! 
The ladies really liked it because they could walk over to the Visitors’ Center and catch a shuttle bus anytime they wanted to go anywhere in the canyon or the town. They said that after being on the top of the Grand Canyon, looking down into those depths and distances it was refreshing to be in the bottom of a canyon looking up at the heights and sky. We were awestruck by the rock climbers scaling those absolute vertical cliffs. Zion is lovely with the river flowing through it and the seep springs oozing down the cliffs. These beautiful watery ‘grottos’ with lovely names like Emerald Pool and Weeping Rock are filled with ferns and other water loving plants and welcome all kinds of wildlife. The play of light in and over the canyon walls is like a light show all by itself, all day long. It is very rich and bountiful, but of course it is a much smaller world so it felt closer and more intimate. The walks and paths were easy and well maintained and the weather was perfect. 
As we drove north-west out of Zion, on our way to Bryce Canyon, we decided to take what appeared on one of our maps as a neat shortcut up the west side of Zion to the town of Cedar City. It was a 45 mile unpaved back road called Kolob Reservoir Road and it turned out to be another one of those incredible surprises. After about ten miles we came to the Reservoir itself, a high mountain, clear cold little lake with fishermen, ducks, campers and the like. You could just tell it was well used and well loved by the locals. Unfortunately at that point we couldn’t tell which road went on to Cedar City, so we asked a couple of fly fishermen whose explanation fell a little short of the mark. Once we turned around and back tracked a mile or two, we asked a wrangler working his cattle if we were on the road to Cedar City and he said, “Yup. Keep goin’. Go about 35 more miles. Never get off the main road. You’ll get there”.
So off we went up higher and higher until we were on top of the world and then we were suddenly surrounded by the most awesome aspen forest we had ever seen. Huge old trees lining both sides of the gravel and dirt road, their sun-gold leaves blasting the world with vibrant yellows and oranges, their stark white trunks so crowded together they seemed like a solid wall of light. We were dumbfounded by the beauty and solitude of it all. I simply couldn’t contain myself and just had to get out into that country for a run and a smell. It was terrific chasing the Pod down the road for about half a mile! Kae noticed that there carvings on many of the trees; you know hearts and initials and pledges of undying love; some dating as far back as 1939. We joked that maybe this was the Mormon teenage equivalent of urban graffiti! We eventually came out off this high mountain terrain at the junction of Hwy 14, turned right and were on our way to Bryce Canyon National Park but the images we have of that isolated beauty will stay with us for a long, long time.
After Hwy.14 we traveled Hwy.89 to Scenic Byway 12, an ‘All American Road’. These are special designations for certain roads in America that are so unique they are classified as destinations in and of themselves. The first place we entered was the small but brilliant Red Canyon, full of intensely red formations and lots of hiking and biking trails. We came back at sunset to catch the light play on all those sandstone formations and to affirm that all that red was real.
Okay, we know that is journal is the longest yet so we are going to give your poor little computers a break and save some of you download time by dividing this into two emails. We will email the second Utah section a day after this one.
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