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It's only a couple of hours from Las Vegas to Zion National Park in Utah. I recommend the visit. We stayed in a cabin on the grounds, with a nifty little instant fireplace to take off the incredible chill following our initial introduction to the Vegasian desert heat. The thing about Zion is that you're at the bottom of a canyon, and there are numerous jumping off points (figuratively speaking) for all sorts of different hikes. Mostly you find yourself climbing up, eventually to find signs for numerous other jumping off points (literally speaking). These signs are classic icons, and there are two of them. The first says Danger, and there's a picture of some schmegeggie falling off a cliff. The second says Danger, and there's a picture of some schmegeggie falling off a cliff but bouncing on every protuberance on the way down. Pick your choice of demise. In either case, the signs are posted at various one-foot-wide stretches of the path where, in fact, you will fall to your death either in one swell foop, or with a lot of little foops along the way.
That's entertainment!
Gorgeous country, though. All of it. Lots of spontaneous waterfalls, beautiful little lakes, breathtaking vistas. At some point, I found myself in a corral being eyed up and down by some squinty be-chapped cowboy who ultimately broke through his disdain and announced, "Kitty." As in, I was being assigned to the horse named Kitty. Now you know as well as I do that I should have gotten the mule named Buttercup, or the horse named Old Red, a nonchalant nag older than my mother that went instead to my daughter. But oh, no. I got Kitty. For those of you unfamiliar with our equine cousins, horses are these incredibly uncomfortable creatures that enjoy nothing more than speeding up, slowing down, eating every shrub from here to Arcadia, and doing whatever it takes to get the saddle, with the rider initially poised at twelve o'clock, to somehow reposition roughly at about a quarter past three. So, hanging on for dear life, progressively listing further and fuurther to starboard, and pulling Kitty's head back from the on-the-road brunch every two seconds, I made my way with the regiment for three hours of muscle torture that you simply can't imagine, because who knew you actually had muscles in any of those places? Of course, halfway there (such there as there was), it began to hail. Fortunately we were pummeled with these golfball-sized ice missiles for only about ten minutes or so, and it cleared up. Until, about five minutes from the corral heading home, the sky opened with good-old-fashioned American rain, just enough to soak one and all (and which, I'm sure, was the final example of Kitty's personal spite against me). We never saw another cloud for the entire trip. Or, thank God, another horse.
Not far from Zion is Bryce, which is Zion's opposite. At Bryce, you start at the top of the canyon, around 8000 feet above s.l. Which means that you're out of breath simply opening the door of the car. But what a sight! There are these things called hoodoos, rocks eroded by thousands of years of wind, that are one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Unfortunately, all the trails down into the canyon had been washed out by recent rains, except for the horse trail, which at this point was not an option. This was a little too bad, because I would have loved to have gone down in there.
So, strong recommendations for Zion and Bryce. If you're in Vegas anyhow, add 4 or 5 days to the trip and see something (presumably) real.
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