Boulder to Zion

After our excellent hiking in the Rockies it was south and east to Sand Dune National Monument (a sand dune system in the middle of nowhere) before heading to Mesa Verde. This is a series of stonework houses set below cliff faces by the Ancestral Puebloans (used to be the Anasazi, but this isn’t used anymore). Amazing constructions and they must have been smart people to be able to live in such large groups in an arid environment.

Then off to Utah via the Four Corners marker (the only place in the USA where the corners of four states meet) and it was queue up to take a photo again. We settled into Moab with 100F temps and did a few short walks in the mornings at both Arches and Canyonlands NP’s. Great views - of arches and canyons funnily enough - and interesting scenery, but more touristing-by-car than hiking, particularly considering the temps.

To try and avoid the rest of what was hoped to be the last hot weather of the summer, it was off to Salt Lake City for 2 days for Jen to do some family history research while Ian fitted in only his second afternoon nap. And they call this a holiday!

Then it was south to Capital Reef where further hot weather and subsequent thunderstorms reduced the amount of hiking we did – immanent death from flash-flooding canyons has recently exiled bear attack at the head of Jen’s about-to-die-from list.

Next was a short visit to the small but pretty Bryce Canyon where the weather was very pleasant – camping at 8000 ft makes life a lot more pleasant in the summer.

From there it was off to the wonderful Zion National Park. Zion’s main section is a single valley cut into various sandstone units up the sides of which there are numerous walking tracks. It is so busy – about 3 million visitors a year- that you can’t drive your own car up the valley and numerous park-run free shuttle buses are used instead. We did two great hikes up the valley and an even better one up a sometimes-narrow canyon. This had a creek running through it and was a cool break from the 105F outside the canyon. The last night at Zion was soooo hot, Ian slept outside the van while the next night was spent further south on the northern side of the Grand Canyon (8800ft) and required a closed-up van, two blankets and a doona!