Zion & Bryce Canyon National Parks

We pause in our trip south for a week at St. George RV Park just south of Leeds, UT and north of St. George, UT with an address in Hurricane, UT (go figure how they give these places addresses!).  This is an Encore park that accepts RPI (Resort Parks International) memberships at $10 per night.  In addition, we paid another $3 per night for 50 amp service plus tax on the kit and caboodle of 11.5%.  Still, a week for $101.47 is not bad.   Our first assigned spot was too narrow for us to open our slides with a tree on one side and a post on the other.  The park was very accommodating in moving us to a slightly wider spot that worked.  That being said, we were parked bow to stern with the coach on either side resulting in a narrow corridor for two coach’s utilities and a shared porch on the other side.  The park does have a few amenities: pool, mini-golf, laundry, and showers.  We found it to be good accommodations for our trips into St. George for shopping (Costco, outlet mall, tons of restaurants, etc. etc. …  St. George is a good-sized town), and to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks for sightseeing.  There is some highway noise (the park is just off Interstate 15) but we had a nice view from our coach window of some red cliffs and would stay here again.  Just be aware that it has tight accommodations and is not really conducive to “camping”.  On the Wildride Scale of 1-10 (1 = lousy and 10 = magnificent) we would give this park a solid 6.

View from the Park

Lake in State Park around the corner from Park

As mentioned above we spent most of our time visiting two national parks:  Zion and Bryce Canyon.  Zion is a short twenty-minute drive from the RV Park so we decided to tackle it first.  Wikipedia notes that Zion is “a prominent feature of the 229-square-mile (590 km2) park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles (24 km) long and up to half a mile (800 m) deep, cut through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River. The lowest elevation is 3,666 ft (1,117 m) at Coalpits Wash and the highest elevation is 8,726 ft (2,660 m) at Horse Ranch Mountain. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park's unique geography and variety of life zones allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals (including 19 species of bat), and 32 reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones: desert, riparian, woodland, and coniferous forest. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches.”

The park provides a shuttle bus through ion Canyon with 8 stops that allow passenger to get on and off at their leisure.  The bus travels through the bottom of the canyon, so unlike Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon, the view is from the bottom up rather than the top down.  Here are a few of our pictures.

Shuttle Buses go up the Canyon

Human History Museum

Formations in back of the Human History Museum

The Three Patriarchs

View from Zion Lodge

At the far end of the canyon

The Virgin River runs through

Back at the Visitors' Center

Wildlife in the Park is large and small

Bryce Canyon National Park was a 2-½ hour drive from our RV Park (5 hours round trip).  We got an early start on the day and started driving.  It was worth the windshield time!  Don’t miss this one.  We liked it better than Zion.  The drive to the park takes you through the Red Canyon.

Formations in Red Canyon

Formations in Red Canyon

Wikipedia has this to say about Bryce: “The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon which, despite its name, is not a canyon but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lakebed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m).”

Since Bryce sits at a higher elevation is was quite a bit cooler than Zion.  In addition, they had stopped their shuttle runs at the end of September so we took our car from view site to view site.  It takes about 3 hours to see the formations without taking any of the hikes.  We took a few easy ones so spent a bit longer.  Here are a few pictures.

Until Next Time … Keep Doing What You Love!!