On the morning of July 4, Jim, manager of the Quail Park Lodge, had coffee ready early. The donuts, and these were real old fashioned donuts, hadn't appeared yet, so we drove the block into town to see if Little Lena's coffee shop was open. Lena's has the best coffee in town and the scones weren't bad either. But we were out of luck. So we pushed on to Zion.
Zion is on a "scenic route", route 9 running east/west connecting Kanab to Route 15, the road to Las Vegas. Nothing we read prepared us for this ride through the park. We knew the road was under construction, but what we found was a drive from the top to the bottom of the canyon on hairpin turns. It was canyon walls up close and personal... I was afraid to look in the other direction, off the road into the abyss. Ray only had to drive the gravel and keep us from the edge. It was pretty much white knuckle driving. 
We finally arrived at the bottom. As we entered Zion National Park our first sight on the way to the visitor center was this checkerboard mountain. It was originally a sand dune, but solidified over millions of years. Some of the original dunes were 3000 feet high.
Zion is different from Bryce and Grand Canyon because you are seeing the canyon from the bottom, not the top. We took the bus through the canyon and got a good tour. We first got off at the Zion Lodge, and found that elusive cup of great coffee! They serve Green Mountain! We sipped the brew gazing up at the rock wall and beautiful greenery at the base.
Like the other canyons, it's impossible for a camera to capture the scale of the canyon. We alighted the bus further up into the canyon and walked to the edge of the Virgin River, the waterway responsible for carving out this entire canyon. Ray is standing next to it and you might be able to tell that it's just a few feet wide.
Zion became a national park in 1919. It was named Zion by a Morman, Zion meaning peace and refuge. It is amazingly so even today.
This is the site of the highest sandstone mountains in the world.
Zion was one of my favorite sights on the trip. Being in the canyon and looking up was moving in a very different way.
On our way back to the visitor center the bus driver told us that they had put on extra buses for the 4th of July holiday weekend, expecting big crowds, but traffic was much lighter than expected. She didn't think it was the economy keeping people away because they had had record crowds of 35000 over Memorial Day.
We left the park around noon and moved on to Las Vegas where we found THOUSANDS of people, all the ones who didn't come to the park and then some!
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