“Take another road to a hiding place / Disappear without a trace / Take another road in another time” – Jimmy Buffett
Although today was mostly a driving day, it had a memorable ending at Zion NP that makes it deserving of higher than the 3.5 mountains it earned in our road trip journal. We woke up with the Grand Canyon out our window and are going to sleep in Zion Canyon, those two facts alone make for a unique day. The 5.5 hours in the car were unmemorable as was the time we spent at Pipe Spring NM. Since it’s late I’m going to highlight the highs of the day and skip over the lows.
The first high of the day was arriving to our cabin at Zion. After settling into our space Molly and I sat on the porch enjoying the views, a touch of WiFi, and our beverage of choice. I can’t believe it took until day 20 for me to finally open the bottle of Knob Creek I brought with, but the wait was worth it.
We had decided to have dinner at the restaurant at Zion Lodge, but it was booked so we headed into the gateway town of Springdale, UT instead. Somehow, in all the visits we’ve made to Zion we’ve never made it to Springdale. It seemed to be everything that Estes Park, CO should be, but isn’t. It seems that it has the potential to be another road that’d be worth considering.
Foodwise, Meme’s provided us with a solid dinner. We hadn’t yet had great ice cream this trip, but a stop at the Springfield Chocolate Company fixed that.
The best part of the evening came after Ellie and I dropped off Z and Mol at the Lodge to pick up some extra towels. A few minutes later they excitedly returned to the cabin and told E and I we had to come back with them. The four of us spent the next half hour watching a herd of 13 deer grazing on the lawn outside the lodge.
Now we’re going to bed eager for tomorrow’s hike. Upon our arrival here we reassessed our choice of hike and decided to brave the throngs of morons to hike The Narrows again. Fingers crossed that our choice works out.