Friday in Glen Canyon and Zion

We spent Thursday night in Tuba City, AZ - on the Navajo Trail in the Painted Desert. We even got to hear a little of the Navajo language.

Then we headed up to Glen Canyon which is on the border with Utah along the Colorado river. The scenery is very dramatic - with jagged sandstone mountains and breathtaking views across the valleys. We took a tour of the Glen Canyon dam which was completed in 1964 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The tour included a walk on the top of the dam (600+ feet above the river) from which you can see both sides and then a trip down the elevator into the depths of the dam (500+ feet below) - where you can see the giant turbines generating power for use across the southwest. More details at the Bureau's website.

Well Zion National Park in Utah is my favorite so far on the trip - spectacular and yet amazingly uncrowded and quiet. Visitors drive down through the park through all the twisty switchbacks and tunnels through the mountains until you reach the bottom and the Visitor's Center. Then you take a one of the shuttle buses and get off at various spots. They run until 11:00 p.m. which we thought quite cool. Many of the rock formations have names and the "Patriarchs" (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) are particularly beautiful.

Zion would be a fabulous place to camp - at the bottom of the canyon - so we will definitely have to come back some day.

We made it to Hurricane, UT for the night.