Staying up late to hang out with our friends probably wasn't the smartest move for R and me, considering that the plan was to be on the road by 7:30AM PDT this morning. Why so early? Because that's how we roll every day, vacation or not!
Haha! Um, that would be a big NO.
Actually, we had several places to stop today on our way to Page, AZ. And for the benefit of our future civil engineer, we also wanted to get to Glen Canyon Dam in time for the last tour of the day.
Amazingly, we were able to drag ourselves out of bed, check out, load up the van, and head north on I-15 only 20 minutes behind our intended schedule. After driving through the beautiful Virgin River Gorge (and the Mountain Standard time zone), we entered Utah (MDT) and eventually made it to
Pipe Spring National Monument back in Arizona (MST).
This unit tells the story about Mormon ranchers, as well as the Kaibab Paiute, who lived here and depended on the water found at Pipe Spring. Because we got sidetracked looking at the exhibits in the visitor center and watching the park film, we missed joining the 11:00AM MST tour of the fort and unfortunately didn't have time to wait until the next one. So we just walked around the grounds for a bit.
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| Winsor Castle (from the outside) |
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| Guess what? Chicken butt! |
Our next stop was the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument visitor center in Kanab, UT (back to MDT) for a passport stamp. If you've ever wanted to see "
The Wave" in person instead of on the desktop background of your computer, this is where you would go for hiking permits, except that it would probably be you and 150-200 other people there applying for the lottery for the 10 walk-in permits issued each day.
After a quick lunch, we continued on to the visitor center in Big Water, UT (still MDT) for another passport stamp. It had some cool displays on paleontological discoveries from this region.
From there, it was only 20 minutes further to
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Encompassing over 1.25 million acres in both Utah and Arizona, Glen Canyon NRA observes MST year-round. We went straight to the visitor center to get tickets to tour the dam, but they were sold out. Bummer!
So, we spent the rest of the afternoon checking out what we could see from the land, because tomorrow we will be out on the water!
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| Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell |
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| Glen Canyon Bridge |
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| Colorado River looking south from the bridge |
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| Navajo Mountain from Wahweap Overlook |
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| Glen Canyon Dam |
And photo ops for my Instagrammers...
Amazingly, we were able to drag ourselves out of bed, check out, load up the van, and head north on I-15 only 20 minutes behind our intended schedule. After driving through the beautiful Virgin River Gorge (and the Mountain Standard time zone), we entered Utah (MDT) and eventually made it to Pipe Spring National Monument back in Arizona (MST).
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