DAY16 ZION

Left the motel this morning and headed south towards Zion National Park. After about 45 miles stopped to get a water bottle and noticed that I had forgotten my cold weather/rain gear bag at the motel. This is really Al's fault since I roomed with him last night and he knows the rules. Whoever rooms with me has to check for the stuff I forget, last year it was a rain coat and a swim suit.

I rode back and got my bag then we headed towards Zion stopping just outside the park for lunch. After lunch we went into the park stopped at the visitors center to check the map and then drove on. The road in Zion runs all the way through the park and out the other side with several places to stop along the way. There is also a narrow 1.1 mile tunnel built in 1930 with several openings for ventilation out the cliff face, good ride.

The ranger at the visitors center had the perfect description of the differences between Bryce and Zion. At Bryce you look down, at Zion you look up. Each park has an assortment of hiking trails of varying difficulty, I wish we had more time at each park and it is a reason to return.

We are stopped for the night in Page and plan on heading east in the morning then south towards Show Low for the night this will put us home on Thursday. Talking at lunch today if we had been able to get to the Black Hills and Yellowstone we would have hit three weeks exactly. Not bad planning for not planning, just luck I guess.

While riding today I was thinking about the large number of road signs I've seen on this trip. I think the most frequent was "FALLING ROCKS" with the sign for curving roads coming in a close second. There were also signs for deer, elk, antelope, cows, and the least favorite "ROUGH ROAD AHEAD" at times the had so many of these for one stretch of pavement it would have been cheaper to just fix the road. Another sign that we saw many times was "ALL VEHICLES MUST CARRY SNOW CHAINS BEYOND THIS POINT" don't care if I ever see that one again.

We had our picture taken several times today by bus loads of german and french tourists who were intrigued by the bikes. Wanted to introduce myself as Bronson, old tv show reference.

Sixteen days and other than a light sprinkle and some light snow we have stayed dry, never even put rain gear on. A very good ride as we did what we said we would and "followed the weather".