Epic Road Trip 2017 - Day #7

Today we got to have breakfast with friends in Moab!  We met up with Juan Carlos, another recently graduated residency classmate of mine, and his sister Karina.  They are also on a road trip and we happened to be in Moab on the same day.  We met up at the Moab Diner, just on the other side of our Airbnb and had a great breakfast together.  After breakfast, we packed up the truck and headed out toward Zion National Park.  Along the way, we stopped at a viewpoint for Capitol Reef National Park and saw some of the stunning and unique geology there.

About the time we stopped for gas 200 miles down the road, we realized we still had the key for our Airbnb that we forgot to put back in the box before we left.  We called and told them we would drop it in the mail and they said it was no big deal and they had extras.  We stopped at Cedar City, Utah and mailed the key back.  A few miles outside Zion National Park, we stopped at the River Rock Roasting Company and got Katy a coffee, me a Diet Dr. Pepper, and shared a delicious lemon cookie.  The shop was a drive through only that was made out of an old shipping container.  In the afternoon, we got to Zion National Park and parked at the Visitor Center.

The main road in the park is not for private cars, and you have to take the shuttle, so we went all the way to the end of the road and back on the shuttle.

The views of the park were spectacular!  Zion is a steep canyon carved out by the Virgin River with a multitude of different ecosystems all within a relatively small area.  Some of the sheer cliffs are over 1000 feet high.

We were originally planning on hiking to the narrows, but there were rains in the area and we didn't want to get stuck if it were flooding.  We settled for the tour via the shuttle and we also stopped at the Human History Museum where we watched a video on the park and saw exhibits about the history of humans in Zion National Park.  From the Human History Museum, we walked the last mile out to the Visitor Center on the Pa'rus Trail.  After our few hours in the park, we struck out for St. George, Utah, just an hour down the road from Zion.  We stayed at the Comfort Inn and had dinner at Sakura Japanese Steakhouse.

What We Learned: Today we learned about weeping rock at Zion National Park.  Weeping rocks occur when water seeps through rock in a cliff, meets a layer impermeable to water, and travels out laterally to the vertical edge of the cliff.  After a time, the water erodes the edge of the cliff and a recess is formed, with the water still dripping from the top of the recess, hence weeping rocks.

For the day we traveled 392 miles and saw 40 state license plates, Quebec, Sonora, and Cherokee Nation.