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We entered Zion National Park pretty early in the morning. The rocks here looked much harder than those at Arches and Bryce Canyon National Parks. We stopped just before a tunnel on UT9 and hiked on the Canyon Overview trail. The trail was along a vertical cliff, and had bridges at a number of places. This is the only trail in Zion National Park where you will be looking down. On all the other trails, you will be looking up the canyon walls!
Along the trail, we saw a very narrow gap in the valley, which we later came to know was the canyon itself. We could see UT9 winding to the canyon floor. The road is red in color! The forest officials told us later that it was made that way on purpose to make it blend with the surroundings. After crossing the tunnel, the road was just a series of sharp switchbacks all the way to the canyon bottom.
At the visitor center, we were told that the hike to the Narrows was not
recommended. The Narrows, as the name implies, is the narrow portion of
Zion canyon. At places, it is 20 ft wide... and 2000 ft high! The trail to
the narrows is the river.
So hiking along the trails implies jumping on
rocks, wading, and even swimming! That day the water temperature was a
chilling 48 F (7 c), and the speed was 189 cubic ft/sec. For an average
person, 120 cu ft/sec is the limit at which one can wade through the water
without getting carried away. The river is not deep, its only about
knee-deep... most of the times. But if there are flash floods, the water
level rises by a few tens of feet in minutes!
We took an easy trail to the entrance of the Narrows, seen in the photo on the left (Click for a larger image). The canyon floor had abundant thick vegetation. There were tall trees, and "hanging gardens", a bunch of plants living on the vertical canyon walls, thriving on the water that seeps through the porous rocks. There were no conifers here.
The Zion canyon is formed by the North fork of Virgin river. There is no South fork! The other fork is known as the East fork, and it meets the North fork Southwest of Zion National Park, and then flows into Arizona, meeting Colorado river in Grand Canyon. Soon after we started from Zion National Park, we went through drier desert. The heat was much more intense here. I15 goes about 40 miles through Arizona, the "Grand Canyon State". We passed through portions of Virgin river Gorge along the road. Its still desert all around, although there is a river at the center of the gorge. There were warnings of "Strong Winds" all over the Gorge.
The Virgin river Gorge and I15 enter Nevada, "125 years of vision". Nevada is more or less flat desert, although there are some mountain ranges. We even saw one mountain with snow-covered peaks! The wind gusts are very strong, as there is little to stop it. The roads are straight, though go through hills. We zipped through the city of Las Vegas, but did not stop. Did I mention both of us were on student budget?
As we entered California, we saw Ivanpah dry lake. Its a vast area of absolutely flat land with yellowish-white soil. We passed through a mountain pass at 4100 ft. For the first time, we saw cacti along the roadside in the desert. We saw the world's tallest thermometer in Baker, CA. The temperature read 88 F. Between Baker and Barstow we saw an exit for "Zzyzx Road". I really doubt whether any other road in the world will have more Z's in its name. We decided to stop at Barstow, which is a major junction of I40 and I15.