Canyon and Desert 11 May 1999, Tuesday Started: Mount Carmel Junction, Utah Reached: Barstow, California Miles: 368 (3317 cumulative) Route: Utah - Zion NP, St. George Arizona - Northwest corner Nevada - Mesquite, Las Vegas California - Baker Highways: I15 We decided to empty the extra gas can we were carrying into the gas tank. The smell was driving us crazy and from here onwards, the journey was through big enough places. We spilled about 20% of the gas on the car and the floor! As we approached Zion NP, two deers crossed our path. The road through Zion NP, UT9, was considered as engineering marvel at the time it was constructed. It descends from Colorado plateau to the plains. The rocks here looked lot more tough than those at Arches and Bryce Canyon NPs. There is a tunnel on UT9 in Zion NP. Its so narrow that the forest rangers have to escort trailers and buses, since they have to stop the traffic in the other direction for this to be possible. We stopped just before the tunnel 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 NP 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. We saw some holes in a nearby cliff, which looked like man-made. We could not figure these out! Later as we got in the tunnel, we realized that they were breathing holes for the tunnel! They were necessary as the tunnel is long and in the old days the vehicles were lot slower. After 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*! While on the road to the trailhead, we had a shuttle in front of us. It stopped at one turn. Cursing them, we braked. As I looked up from the passenger side window, I spotted two rock-climbers, high above on the vertical cliffs! No wonder the shuttle stopped. We took an easy trail to the entrance of the Narrows from Temple of Sinawawa. 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. We took another trail to Emerald pool. We reached the lower pools and passed *behind* a waterfall! The trail then went up to the upper pools, but we did not have hiking shoes and the trail was exposed, so we decided to turn back. 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 NP, and then flows into Arizona, meeting Colorado river in Grand Canyon. Soon after we started from Zion NP, 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". We passed Mesquite, famous for its casinos. Soon after that, we were pulled over by a cop for the first time in this journey. I guess seeing Ohio license plate in Nevada was the main reason. He said that he got "records not found" when he fed the license plate number to his computer. He checked our licenses, insurances, and registration papers, and let us go. 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. We did not plan a stop here. Both of us were on student budget, and we would be coming here sometime later anyway. As we travelled West of Las Vegas, we saw on the map that we were just South of a nuclear test site. As we entered California, we saw Ivanpah dry lake. Its a vast area of absolutely flat land with yellowish-white soil. Here I had my first experience of a mirage. The lake is totally dry, but it appears to be full of water. Only after the car started moving across it, rather than towards it, I saw that I was fooled. In California 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. Its a big town, and we had a really nice Chinese dinner.