Saturday, October 27th: Heading to Zion National Park

Before leaving our motel in Tropic this morning, we purchased gas and some groceries.  And then we hit the road.  We headed north towards Bryce Canyon and decided to spend a bit of time there in the early morning sunlight, before heading to Hurricane, Utah and Zion National Park. BRYCE NATIONAL PARK, with its hoodoos was spectacular.   After leaving Bryce, we drove through the Red Canyon area which was beautiful. We saw an abandonment (I think a small ranch) along the way, not too far west of Bryce and stopped to explore a bit.   I don't think we made any other stops until we got to Zion.  Once there, we stopped at a few viewpoints, and then we took a hike on a trail.  It was magnificent?  Then we went to the Visitors Center and hopped on the free shuttle bus which takes visitors to several points in the canyon.

free shuttle bus at Zion National Park

  I think we stopped at every stop to look around and take pictures.    thoroughly enjoyed Zion.  My complete set of pictures are here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/juneny/sets/72157631974262601

Before going to Hurricane, Utah for our lodging, we decided to try to find the ghost town of Grafton, Utah.  We were successful and enjoyed the old buildings and took pictures, which can be seen here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/juneny/sets/72157631957500174/ 
These two buildings in Grafton have been restored and are fenced off.  Peg and I THOUGHT there was a geocache hidden near these buildings, and while looking, Peggy found the keys to the buildings.  She quickly replaced them, and we moved on to explore the rest of Grafton.

Before going to our lodging in Hurricane, we had supper at a place called something like Mr. J's Diner.  It was very good!

Our lodging in Hurricane was a bit of a disappointment since I had requested a first floor room and were given a second floor room.  This would not have been much of a hardship except that the hotel did not have any elevator.  Anyways, the room was nice, and I was happy to be able to use a computer with internet near the lobby that night.