The third day was filled with lots of driving and sightseeing. We planned to leave Vegas and head to Zion National Park. The drive to Zion from Vegas wasn’t too long, and it was quite interesting, especially for someone like me who’s from the east coast of the US. The landscape, in particular, caught my attention. Vegas is a city in the desert, so when we drove out of Vegas, we saw a vast area that looked like the Gobi Desert. Surprisingly, there were many solar farms along the highway. This makes sense because there’s so much sunlight and sunny days in this area. After about 4 hours of driving, we arrived at Zion National Park.
The park had a bus tour that took tourists to different spots up and down the valley. This is different from the Grand Canyon, which we’ll talk about in the day 4 and 5 article. There, we typically stayed on the rim of the canyon. The amazing reddish cliffs and rocks in Zion were created over millions of years by the carving and erosion of the Virgin River. The road inside the park is called Zion Canyon Scenic Drive. Visitors start from Canyon Junction and go to the end stop called Temple of Sinawava. Out of all the stops, I personally liked Weeping Rock and Temple of Sinawava the most. Weeping Rock is a big arch-shaped area where water drips down through cracks in the rocks, creating a really cool breeze inside. Temple of Sinawava is a long walk down to the Virgin River. Visitors follow a walking path to the riverbed and then follow a trail up the river. Sadly, the trail was partly closed when we visited, but we still got to walk halfway. I collected some red sandstones as souvenirs for the kids and took some great pictures of the mountains around the valley. We finished our visit around 4:00 that day and started heading to our next stop, Page, AZ. This is the place to see Horseshoe Canyon and visit the Navajo camp for the Antelope Canyon.
The quickest way to Page is through Zion Park. We bought an annual National Park pass, which lets you visit any national park within a year without needing to buy more tickets. After about two more hours of driving, we arrived in Page. This place is interesting too. Page has a few thousand residents, most of whom work in tourism. It’s a young town that was built to accommodate the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. The dam sits on the Colorado River, and its construction created Lake Powell. But the existence of the dam is controversial. Some environmentalists believe it’s had a negative impact on the Colorado River’s biodiversity and has changed the habitats of native fish. Even though Page is small, there are a few good restaurants around. We had dinner at a place called New York Teriyaki. Interestingly, just like the name suggests, it offers fusion food inspired by Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Western cuisines. We wrapped up the day with some Japanese Sake, checked into our hotel, and had a good night’s sleep.