Category: Campgrounds

Another great day at Zion.

Tomorrow we move to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.  We have reached the maximum of 14 days at Zion between March and October.  We’ll be at Coral Pink for Friday and Saturday.  Sunday we’ll drive to Canyon de Chelly National Monument with a goal of Monday being at Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site.   Jean wants to see this trading post and we have not spent much time in northeastern Arizona.

We may not have internet access for a while so this may be the last post for a couple of days.

Here’s a bit a information that may useful in the future.

One – don’t leave your door open when you’re not home.
Two – If you’re going to bring the kitty be sure it’s as least as big as the squirrels.

Yesterday I didn’t mention that the two condors were number 52 and 99 ( that’s the only numbers I could see on the tags).  I spent some time and here’s what I found out about them.

99= is number 299, age 8 Male, born 4/17/2003, released 3/20/2004, note on National Park Service Condor information site,  ( http://www.nps.gov/grca/naturescience/upload/condor-chart20110713.pdf) ’11: Seemed likely to nest near Angel’s Landing in Zion NP, with 343F/A3. But sent to V.C. for chelation due to high lead levels, instead.

52= is number 352, age 7 Female, born 5/29/2004, released 3/1/2005.

Have a GREAT day, Harry.

 

 

8:00 p.m. setting outside at the picnic table, another great evening at Zion. I got up early this morning and caught the 5:45 hiking bus up the canyon. This bus leaves early and is focused on people who want to get an early start hiking. It doesn’t stop at a regular bus stop unless someone is there. During the day it takes 45 minutes to get up the canyon, on the morning express bus it takes 20 minutes.

My plan for today was to hike up the west rim trail past Scout Pass and Angels Landing and spend most of the morning out on the open rock enjoying the country. Sunrise is after 7:00 a.m so I needed a flashlight to hike to first half hour. I could see trail however I could not see the high spots in trail used to divert water. Enter this ( 37.27938-112.95127 ) into Google Earth and you’ll be able to see where I went.

It was a nice day and got back to camp about 2:00.

I spent some time photographing the attached dragon fly.

On the way back down I saw several condor flying along the ridge line of Scout Pass and Angel’s Landing. I could not read the wing tag numbers until I downloaded the pictures.  Here a a few of the pictures I took.

Some of the pictures I took at our stop at the Golden Spike National Monument are here.

We had a nice sunny day at Zion, well mostly sunny.  A couple of hours from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. a very large cloud moved over the valley and we got 43 rain drops in our campsite.   This morning Hank and I went for a walk.  The cardio GPS tracker said 4.77 miles, anyway we had nice walk and he is getting better on a leash.
Wednesday is supposed to be a little warming with no afternoon clouds.

Got to Zion at 12:45, 80 degrees and rained most of the afternoon.   Didn’t do much in the afternoon mostly read and stayed out of the rain.