November 26
La Verkin
And now the trip to our ultimate destination for celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday . . .
[The trip from Las Vegas to Utah takes a more than scenic route on Interstate 15 . . . ]
[Unfortunately, this route is under assault by orange construction barrels and will apparently will continue to be so for several more years . . . ]
[La Verkin, population 4,060, is attached at the city limits to Hurricane (pronounced her-eh-cun), population 13,748, and are 18 miles NE of St. George, population 87,178 . . . ]
[Approaching Utah . . . ]
[And St. George . . . ]
[There’s St. George . . . ]
[We’ll stop here for breakfast . . . ]
[At a place where we had eaten on a previous trip . . . ]
[But the Painted Pony is not a breakfast place . . . ]
[So, we went to another place we had also previously darkened for food, George’s . . . ]
[And then we were welcomed to La Verkin . . . ]
[The Super, having been here before, knew to turn left at the car wash airplane . . . ]
[We arrived first at Beth and Chris’s. And when Rita and Dave subequently arrived Rita took the established position of someone who had just completed a long trip . . . ]
November 27
Zion National Park
[La Verkin is a mere 20 miles west of Zion National Park. So, let’s go again – I believe I had been there four times previously . . . ]
[And there is some nice scenery before you get there . . . ]
[Is that Hogwarts ahead?]
[Sure looks like it . . . ]
[Comes with a heliport?]
[The entry way to Zion . . . ]
[We have arrived . . . ]
[And have parked, in the park, impossible in peak season . . . ]
[The scorecard indicates we have, from l – r: Rita, Ruthie, Beth . . . ]
[And a close-up version for easy identification . . . ]
[Beth’s brother Dave joins her on our shuttle bus ride to the end of the park . . . ]
[And The Biddies are excited too . . . ]
[Oh boy, this is fun!!]
[And ungulates too (OK, this one is no longer among the living) . . . ]
[The high red cliffs that define the park . . . ]
[“You are here!” Which is good since here was our destination . . . ]
[And “here” was the end of the line – the Temple of Sinawava . . . ]
[We began walking back from whence we came, just for the hike of it . . . ]
[The absence of greenery is what we find so striking about this part of the country. So we reacted with glee upon discovery of a green cactus . . . ]
[The Super and Dave posed with their find . . . ]
[And, whoa, there’s an evergreen tree . . . ]
[Along the trail we occasional ran across a few obstacles . . . ]
[A tree that at one time, supposedly, was green . . . ]
[Perfect weather for outdoor walking . . . ]
[Occasionally a flash of sunlight would strike a cliff . . . ]
[A rock peak in the background; a green cactus in the foreground . . . ]
[A glimpse of sun . . . ]
[The Virgin River, which eventually flows into the Colorado . . . ]
[An artsy gnarly tree backed by sunny cliffs . . . ]
[I eventually reported this as a violation of the ADD – there should be an escalator for older people to breach the fallen log . . . ]
[A virtual plethora of green cacti . . . ]
[A plethora of red rock . . . ]
[Some times you just have to walk on the road . . . ]
[As the sign says . . . ]
[Followed by a not so big bend . . . ]
[Since only shuttle buses can use this road, we were relatively safe here as we neared a shuttle bus stop where we got on again . . . ]
[These were actually real live ungulates photographed through the bus windows . . . ]
[And here we are at the Angels Landing stop . . . ]
[You may recall that I noted in past blogs that I did climb this one time – OK, it was back in the 80’s when I was still a youngster in my mid-30’s . . . ]
[There it is – we could see people up there but without my telephoto lens I couldn’t get any shots of them . . . ]
[Wow, more cacti . . . ]
[See? Up there? I think it’s an elephant . . . ]
[And now busing back to the visitors center . . . ]
[Where we had lunch . . . ]
[Finally, after a lovely day, good-bye to Zion . . . ]
You know that just before the first Thanksgiving there was one wise old Native American woman saying, Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave. ~ Dylan Brody
Up Next: Maybe Part 4
alexandriacardinals2.wordpress.com 
Nice photos.
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