The drive from Bryce Canyon to Zion National Park was not too long. The scenery starts before you get into the park. The scenery is right in your face! You literally drive right up to it. Colourful "mountains" with strange striations in the rock. Some mesas were whitish grey, some red, with stripes. It's similar to Bryce in that a lot of the colours are shared, yet they are a very different look. In Bryce Canyon, to viewpoints are above the formations and in Zion...

One of the points that the tour bus driver was adamant about was the fact that the terrain in Bryce Canyon is not rock, but dirt. In some areas the soil feels like chalk. Having said that, I should mention the stupidity that we witnessed yesterday at the canyon rim. There was a family of Koreans taking photographs. They thought it would be a good idea if Mom (who, by our best estimation, was about 70 years old), went to the very edge of the rim and did some posi...

Sept 3 Bryce Canyon offers a free shuttle bus service that takes you to the various outlooks in the park. We were at the visitors center in time to take the guided tour to Rainbow Point at the south end of Bryce Canyon. The driver was very knowledgeable and talked about everything from the animals in the park to the plants and rock formations. We went to all the outlooks on the south end of the park. When we got back at 1:30, it started to rain hard, so we went b...

We took a 4 hour tour of Salt Lake City today. We were most interested to see Mormon Square but that was not included in the tour. Tour guides are not allowed in Mormon Square because they have their own volunteers on the property. While the tour was having lunch in one of the Mormon restaurants, we went and took photos in the square. Pretty impressive gardens and buildings. There are a lot of flowers planted in Salt Lake which is in itself impressive because thi...

On the drive south to Salt Lake City, maybe 15-20 minutes outside Idaho Falls, the roadside topography suddenly changed. There were what looked like large black cinder blocks. They were aligned in such a way that made you think there was an earthquake that jostled them and knocked them out of position. In some areas, one of them right next to the highway, it looked like a large sinkhole, big enough to swallow 2 or 3 trucks. Turns out that it's lava formations! Th...