Seeing red!

Purely Celestial!
We are high-tailing it to Bryce Canyon. We have a campsite reservation and we have been on a wait list for it. It is Saturday night – always a “red light” day to find a campsite. On the way we can take the quick route or add another ½ hour to go through Zion National Park. I say to Rip that it must be a National Park for a reason and since we have the reservation we go on intuition – again! It has certainly paid off before.

Zion is the heavenly city of the Bible and so the name came from Mormon pioneers who saw the sculptured rock as the “natural temples of God” and so named the canyon Little Zion. How fitting. Honestly the Grand Canyon is 1 of 7 natural wonders of the world, but we found Zion and Red Rock Canyon attached to it equally as spectacular.

A million years of flowing water has cut the red and white beds of Navajo sandstone into high walls of mighty cliffs, some 2,000 feet or more. Instead of viewing it from the rim like Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon is viewed as you travel from the bottom looking up. The Park’s 229 square miles offer a landscape of remote terraces and narrow gorges, Utah juniper, ponderosa pine cottonwood and also the desert cactus. As we left the park we entered “Red Rock Canyon” where the sculptured sandstone and rock was bright red – including the roadway! It was 2 miles of pure orangey-red wonder at every turn. We danced beside and under and around red sandstone cliffs, adobe type rocks, tunnels and arches. We are really seeing red! We were certainly led to a most heavenly place.