We had breakfast at our Best Western and then left Cedar City for the Cedar Breaks National Monument. It was another beautiful day but much cooler this morning. Cedar Breaks contains some of the most beautiful scenery that we have seen this trip. The monument is peppered with incredible orange red cliffs and canyons. Photos can’t possibly do it justice.
Huge canyon of orange rock shaped by wind and water
It’s hard to see but this canyon is over 1000 feet deep
The walls are a mass of colors
This is what the ground around the canyon looks like
It seems that volcanic activity is everywhere, even here.
After driving through the park, we continued on our journey with Bryce Canyon National Park as our next scheduled destination. Leaving Cedar Breaks we passed this mountaintop lake with an amazing amount of boats considering that it is in the middle of nowhere.
These sheep were wandering on the road.
The west is home to a lot of interesting town folk art.
Bryce Canyon is another beautiful park with more red and orange canyons and pinnacles called Hoodoos.
Sign at Bryce visitors center. Bet you didn’t know that there was even a prairie dog day. They are the #1 road kill in the west.
Looking down into Bryce canyon
Hoodoos
Leaving Bryce, the temperature is now in the low 90’s. After Bryce canyon you pass through Red Canyon with its own beautiful scenery.
Red canyon
We continue our journey to Las Vegas via Zion National Park. I forgot how incredibly beautiful Zion is. Whereas Cedar Breaks and Bryce have canyons that one looks down into, Zion is all about looking up. Beautiful multicolor cliffs and gigantic rock formations are around every bend.
A mass of color
Checker board rock mountain
Beauty everywhere you can see
Zion has a very long tunnel cut into the mountain. It is long enough that windows are cut into parts of it. It was two way traffic, but now they make it a alternating traffic road.
What one sees exiting the tunne
After leaving the park it was almost 2 pm so we decided that we would stop for lunch. This proved to be no easy task because of the huge crowds in town. We finally found a small cafe a way out of town that had no crowd. Babs said that there was no crowd because the food was not good.
The drive to Las Vegas takes you through the Virgin River Canyon as you drop into the desert valley. The high mountains and windy road always are impressive.
The ride down the mountain involves many switch back curves
Looking down you can see the road that we are driving on
It was another two hour drive to Lost Wages and we arrived after 4:30 pm West Coast time. We have a nice room at the Tropicana overlooking the pool.
Dinner was at their Italian restaurant, Bacio which was good. We ordered a bottle of Pinto Grigio that was a 2009 and bad, so we sent it back.
After dinner I lost another $80 making it -$150 for me for the day. I hope tomorrow is better. Tomorrow we were to move from the Tropicana to Sams Town but my lucky wife won a free night here so we are not moving. To add to our luck Sams Town didn’t charge me the cancellation fee, Woo Hoo!
Babs Says: When the seat is hot, a free night we got.
The landscapes in this posting was particularly beautiful. As you know, I had NO IDEA there were so many canyons, deserts, mountains, etc! I really appreciate the blogs!
Way to go Babs!