and heading to the peace and quiet if Zion National Park.
Las Vegas is a bit depressing. Lots of homeless, lots of gambling and lots of glitzy??retail. You keep thinking this is a place that does not NEED to exist. But thousands of people love it!
Looking forward to getting back to the beautiful national parks that, so far, have been unlike any we have seen before.
The landscape out if Las Vegas on the way to Zion is barren until you come across the green oasis of a golf course in the middle of nowhere at 40*C. There are no farms or animals or signs of habitation but there are sometimes fences so I assume there are animals somewhere. There are dots of sage bush about 200mm high and that is it, for miles and miles. There are mesas and dry, eroded even more barren hills which have been uplifted because the obvious parallel striations are at a 30* angle and weathering. The odd clump of grass here and there on the rocky slopes.
Utah, which we passed through after Nevada is the same landscape but it's a bit greener
Zion was huge dark red and white cliffs that have been eroded over millions of years to form a canyon that you enter at river level and look up and up and up at.
We hiked to the beginning of the Narrows where the river has cut 460m deep into sandstone to created huge cliff walls.
The three pinnacles:
Cooled off in the pool then a before dinner drink sitting in front of our lodge room with a great view:
We are staying a the Driftwood Lodge and having dinner at the Kings Landing restaurant at the lodge. A well deserved number 1 in Trip Advisor.
