After checking in here at the Holiday Inn in Tusayan, we went for dinner at the Best Western. Believe it or not the Holiday Inn front desk staff recommended going to the Best Western. The Best Western restaurant is surprisingly up-scale. I was served filet mignon and Susan was served prime rib by an authentic spanish speaking Javier.

Now we're back in room, relaxing watching TV and planning what we'll be doing tomorrow.

Our current plan is to get up early and visit the visitor centre, then assuming the ranger approves, hike a mile and a half down the South Kaibab Trail. The South Kaibab trail is one of the few trails that goes down the main canyon, and it supposedly also gives some of the best views of the canyon.

After the hike we also plan to drive some of the canyon road and stop and look at Mather Point, which supposedly shows a quarter of the canyon from this one point, we also will stop at Yavapai point. Then on the way out of the park, we hopefully will stop in at the Imax theatre to watch "Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets". It may very well be too much planned, being that we have to get back to Las Vegas, a five hour drive, by tomorrow night.

Wish us luck!

The picture as you no doubt can guess is when we were out in the boat in Lake Powell. We toured around a bit, but didn't actually get too far. It was interesting to see the red rock cliffs from a new perspective.

We had only rented the boat for two hours, so we went one way for about an hour, had lunch, then came back. I know it's called Lake Powell, but honestly I would say it's more like a river than a lake. To me a lake is a body of water, more round, with a real body of water. The section we were in had many markers that we probably didn't need to pay attention to as much as we did, and it felt more like running a river.

Sometime in the next half hour we'll be turning right onto AZ-64, and then it's about 60 miles until we're at our Holiday Inn in Tusayan. I took a look at the GPS while still in Page, and surprisingly where we're going is only about 70 miles away, I guess you can't straight when you're in big canyon country. If we've got time, maybe we'll check out the Imax film on the Grand Canyon once we're there and have had dinner.

As always, we'll let you know...

Unlike what I said I was going to do, I pretty well immediately uploaded our postings.

The restaurant in the hotel was closed for the season, and the "better" restaurant's in town all closed at 9:00 so since it was after 8:30 by the time we left the hotel we went to the Denny's. We were both surprised at how good the food was. I had a mushroom burger, Susan had chicken. For dessert I had pumpkin pie, and Susan apple pie. While sitting in the restaurant we read a couple of tourist guides for Page.

We plan to phone one of the local marinas tomorrow to see if we can rent a boat and then to go out on Lake Powell. We've also got a plan to go see a couple of viewpoints that Frommers says is worth seeing.

This evening, we're just having a relaxing time, watching a little TV and catching up on our email (thus the attached picture of Susan).

The picture you see on the left is of Checkerboard Mesa, which seems to be quite a famous attraction in Zion Park. Susan is driving now, but at this point in the road I was driving and Susan was sleeping, after all we had been on the road a lot. Since I hadn't captured a picture of this particular famous attraction, I thought I would snap one. The road has many turnouts where one can take pictures and so I actually took pictures of the Mesa from two different turnouts, with this being the best picture (it was just after sunset).

In Kanab, we stopped outside a Best Western for a moment where I thought I could upload the last few entries, but I ran into a snag so thought it best to push on to Page to work out.

According to the GPS we're 31.5 miles from Page, and will be there in a little over 40 minutes.

I suspect we'll have dinner first, then I'll take a look at uploading these last few entries.

Angels Landing was a great hike and certainly a good way to see the Zion Valley. The books say it takes 4 hours, the waitress last night had said she had easily done it in 3.5 hours, and knew some friends who had done it in 2.5 hours. So, how long did it take Glen and Susan? Well, if you stop every five minutes for a picture (maybe exaggerating), every twenty minutes for a water break (not exaggerating), every hour or so for a snack break, and take an hour long lunch, it takes five hours. It was certainly enjoyable though. The last half mile is certainly a nerve wracking adventure, scrambling along white knuckling a chain to avoid falling off either side. This picture is of us at the top. There's actually a pretty good view that doesn't require the white knuckle section, but after we had already hiked for two hours we felt it worthwhile to push on to the top through the "chain required" section. The bottom of the valley that you can see in the lower right of the picture is actually the elevation at which we started the hike. Up on top we had a great lunch, having to shoo away chipmunks who no doubt were used to being fed by the hikers who made it to the top. The fact that we had a great time, don't get the idea that it was a walk in the park (well actually it was), Susan during the last steep ascent had one moment of "fight or flight" where she thought about not coming up. I also on the way up certainly felt apprehensive. After staying on top an hour, taking pictures, and looking through the binoculars at other parts of the park, we got used to the exposed height and both felt more comfortable on the way down.

How many pictures did we take? Between the manual and digital camera we took to the top, we took a total of 91 pics. 21 using film and 70 on the digital. We probably could have easily taken more (well, yes, we could have), but while on top I had already taken 60 pictures and so only had room for 10 on the way down, and I did use those ten.

Springdale has a population of approximately 300. It strikes me that the town is quite artsy, reminding somewhat of a place like Kaslo in the Kootenays with all the art galleries etc. Clearly the town is built on tourism. For a town of 300 it has a surprising number and variety of restaurants

We chose to go to a place called Pioneer Restaurant, which markets itself as having some excellent home cooked food. I had the special which was meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and Susan had a 4oz chicken breast with mashed potatoes. Both meals came with soup and salad. It's one of the best meals I've had, and Susan was pleased that the 4oz chicken breast was not at all too much like the meals in Vegas had been.

After dinner Susan enjoyed a bath while I did more research on where we would hike tomorrow.

Before getting into that, it reminds me that I should describe a little more on what we did as we arrived in Zion. Before checking in we actually did a little sightseeing and hiking. Since there was considerable light left when we arrived, we drove the length of the Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. At one of the outlooks we did a short hike called Weeping Rock. Weeping Rock is a short but steep hike that leads to an overhang with a constant shower of water coming off it. We pushed through the "rain" and snapped a few pictures. We also started a hike called Riverside Walk, but turned back just a moment in since we realized it would be dark before long.

So now we're back to where we'll hike tomorrow. After reading the material we have, and talking to the waitress in the restaurant, we've decided we're going to try to hike Angels Landing. Angels Landing is a quite strenuous 4 hour round trip hike that takes you to a couple of great viewpoints. The last quarter mile of the trail takes you to the best viewpoint at the cost of scrambling along a precipice. We're planning to evaluate while there as to whether it's worthwhile to do this section since today in Bryce we were hiking in snow and ice. Of course, where ever we go will also have the input of the park ranger.