"All the joy of my world is in Zion..."

Sooo, we've seen LOTS of Utah at this point, and it's amazing. The drive from the Grand Canyon to Zion was almost the most beautiful ride of the trip, second only to Big Sur. The colors and land formations are so unusual and cool...we stopped at a Navajo reservation to check out the jewlery, and then we happened upon Andrea's fave place of the trip--Lake Powell. It's this gorgeous blue lake just plopped in the desert, and it has a dam just as big as the Hoover Dam, you just never hear about it. She's already decided that her next vacation is going to be to rent a house boat on Lake Powell for a week, so she's looking for volunteers to join in...

Once we actually got to Zion, it was breathtaking. The mountains make you feel like you are an ant, and you drive thru this mile long, narrow pitch black tunnel that is super creepy, but made me feel like I was playing a video game. We went to a ranger talk to learn about the wildlife in the park---we saw bighorn sheep and ravens, and I dragged Andrea on a hike early Wed morning up this trail that wasn't that cool, in hopes of spying the desert tortoise under all these rock crevases, but alas, I've named it the "illusive desert tortoise" b/c the rangers say it's really hard to find. Oh well....she got to pick the second hike that day (after we drove into town for iced coffees of course!) and we found this amazing trail that connected 3 waterfalls....and they made you WORK to enjoy these waterfalls, by the time we got to each one we fully immersed ourselves in water (btw...the water was THOUSANDS of years old because it trickled through the rocks), but it was gorgeous, and really fun....some random family took a pic of us giggling under a waterfall together...haha...

The only down fall to Zion was the CRAZINESS of our campground. No one mentioned to us that in the summer time, the southwest of the US is invaded by french people....like thousands of them...wherever we go there are at least 3 student tours and 5 families, if it weren't for park rangers and shuttle bus drivers, we could go for almost a day without hearing someone else speak english! It's weird....but, apparently, it's the thing to do in France. But they are really loud at night, they can't read signs that say "no dishwashing" in the spicket (which was right by our tent) so they flooded the area in our campsite, and Zion was really hot at night, sooo neither one of us slept a wink...BUT, we did get up in the middle of the night to star gaze b/c the sky was like nothing I've ever seen before, it was incredible...

After Zion we moved along to check out Bryce Canyon--super cool Hoodoos, these spire-like things that have been carved out by years of freezing and thawing water, coupled with the wind...it was realllllllly neat, but we only stayed for a couple hours and did some strolling along the canyon, and then we headed out for Capitol Reef. In order to get to Capitol Reef, however, we had to drive along this crazy winding road through these eerie mountains, and at one point I commented to Andrea that I felt like we were on Mars. It was pretty surreal...but Capitol Reef was great. A free park, a $10 campsite with GRASS and a hiking trail right by the campsite. We checked out the park via car first, and oh-my-god was it scary to drive thru these "washes" where there are just HUGE boulders that have fallen from cliffs on either side of you....both of us were convinced that we were going to get squashed, but we reasoned that if we did get squashed, that we would die instantaneously, so we wouldn't ever really know about it....so we trekked on and checked out some pretty amazing canyons. This morning we got up and hiked a canyon trail...Andrea's least fave hike yet b/c it was pretty freakin hot, BUT they laid out these cool little rock pile sculptures for you to follow the trail, so it was kind of like a game...that was fun, despite the heat. After our hike we cleaned up and headed for Moab, our last camping destination. And WHAT a campsite, it makes the others look like child's play...we have a pool, wi-fi, showers, ac in the bathroom (!!), a covered campsite, and a general store at our fingertips!! Fear not though, we have 4 tentsites of french students behind us...should be another late night...BOO b/c we are getting up super early tomorrow to go White Water Rafting on the Colorado River!! We're so pumped...a 10 hr tour (kind of intense), but we both love rafting, and I'm excited to do a river other than the Penobscot or the Dead for a change!!!

Today we also checked out Arches national park, which is reallllllly neat as well, it's so amazing to see what wind and a little tectonic plate action can do in a few million years :) We're hoping to head back there tonight for a sunset hike out to "delicate arch"--the famous one that is in all the Utah pics, even on their license plates....it's threatening to rain right now, so we'll see, but hopefully we can fit it in....

That's all for now, I'm off to go eat a salad---SUCH a luxury! (we have a grocery store one block away!!!) I'm sure we'll be checking in again after rafting tomorrow, we're in Moab for 3 nights, so we'll have wifi at our fingertips!

Adios for now, hope everyone is having a great summer!! Flying by...
~Susie