Zion, Utah

Arrival Thursday, August 6

249 Miles | 4.5 Hours

Trip notes: coverage is pretty poor coming out of Moab so we stop in Salina for Mari & Datta to take care of their calls for the afternoon, ordering our lunch and picking it up from a nearby Mexican Restaurant, taking advantage of the shade provided by a semi truck trailer to keep cool in the heat which is still well over 100 degrees.

We pull into the Saint George/Hurricane KOA after hours and discover that they haven’t left out our reservation packet for us, so we scan the board and select an available space that isn’t listed on any of the other welcome packets.

They’re nice enough about it in the morning and while the park is basically a giant gravel parking lot mostly filled with giant RVs and their occupants tailgating most hours of the day, at least the LTE coverage is good. We end up working for majority of the day as Sibri plays in the pool.

We're camped out in line next to the largest fifth wheel ever made, occupied by a former armed forces gentleman named Jeff who proudly shares that he times his camp set up as T-5 minutes till beer pop. We note the connection between his choice for the 2020 president, marked by the sticker on his truck and the name of his cute dog, which is Jefferson. We ask if the dog is named after him and he say no, he's named, "after President Jefferson" (of the Confederate States of America). We're not sure how to respond, plink plink of our eyes is all I can muster, and particularly in light that this white male is married to a lovely black woman, which raises more puzzlement in our head. I want to ask questions. I want to understand. But I choose to restrain, and they are pleasant neighbors, letting us know the directions to the local Walmart and other nearby locales.

We connect with a delightful family of 10 from New York who have piled into a 23’ trailer they purchased at the beginning of the summer. It's pulled by one of those white vans you see carrying a college sports team. Sibri spends a fun filled day playing with her new friend Meghan while we catch up on work. At the end of the day the adults get to hang out over socially-distant drinks in our camp chairs while the kids watch a movie on Sibri’s iPad.

On our final morning, we finally head to Zion, taking our bikes and cycling up the canyon all the way to the narrows. The scenery is amazing, we see several deer along the way up and encounter a herd of bighorn sheep on the way down.

The girls make a stop at the park stables and get to meet a few of the horses and the cowboy who takes care of them. Datta stays back loading the bikes back into the Audi while Mari and Sibri take off to the gift shop. Datta literally gets kissed by a deer on the pathway outside the store and catches the whole incident on camera, including the warning sign he read just before the deer approached.

You can’t make this stuff up!

After getting a few gifts we grab a delicious lunch including spaghetti squash enchiladas at a place called the Whiptail Gourmet Grill which has been converted into a hip outdoor eatery from a former gas station. The custom overhead misters are welcome feature in the 100+ degree heat.

We get back to the KOA campground mid-afternoon...a bit past check-out time! After chasing a large whiptail lizard out of the Audi (the craziest removal we performed since that black squirrrel “Sammy” in Michigan last year), we hitch up and head towards Vegas.

Departure Saturday, August 8