Camping - One day at a time

It's been two years since I've been on an extended camping trip with any of my children.  My youngest and I had a week long excursion planned for Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park starting on June 18th.  The new park for both of us was Zion.  I'd been there before, but it had been 25 years and I'd never camped there, so we had four days planned there and 3 days planned at Bryce Canyon.

Monday broke bright and clear and we had the car packed early and were on the road by 8:30 AM.  We were packed lean and mean because this was the first time we were camping in our Corolla.  In the past, we'd always camped using our family van, but with my wife's recent surgery, she didn't have enough hand strength to work the stick shift in the Corolla, so we took that so she could maneuver around in the van.


As always, geocaching was a part of the trip.  When we hike, we usually look for geocaches along the way.  When we drive, we look for geocaches to break up the drive, so I don't get too tired and become a road hazard.  Since we were driving all the way to Zion in Utah in one day, one of our goals for the day was to find a cache in every state we traversed, for a total of four.  It was easily done, with Utah the only state where we only found one cache.


We found several caches in and around Las Vegas.  This was the first time we'd stopped in Las Vegas to find caches.  Since it's a major tourist attraction, most of the geocaches in the city tend to be virtual caches, one where you have to either post a photo showing you were there, or email the cache owner with answers to questions that can only be ascertained by being at the correct coordinates.


We found two virtuals near the MGM Grand Hotel, one at M&M World and one at the MGM Grand.  Las Vegas is such an entertaining city.  I don't think there are too many places where you can see a replica of the Statue of Liberty surrounded by a looping rollercoaster across the street from a large hotel castle.  Across another street is a golden lion and a casino/museum dedicated to candy that touts itself as "Melts in your Mouth, not in you Hand."  And hidden behind a sign near that, we saw Batman, sans mask, taking a drag on a cigarette.  Only in Vegas.

The rest of our trip through the Nevada desert was rather monotonous and we were rather glad we weren't early pioneers to the region since our car thermometer was registering 115˚ F outside that day.  It wasn't much cooler by the time we got to Zion, the temperatures in the high 90s at about 6 PM MDT.  All four days we were in Zion, it was triple digit temps, so shade was at a premium.


But the scenery was worthwhile and we happily set up our tent after a long day's drive.  The one problem that camping newcomers have is they don't know the best sites at a particular campground.  We wouldn't consider ourselves newcomers to camping, but definitely newcomers to Zion.  Our campsite didn't have the best shade in the world, so we had to improvise during the days to make sure we were away from the heat and in shade if we happened to be in camp.  There were other sites, particularly D Loop where there was lots of shade.  At least we'll know for next time.


No campfire that evening, in fact, we didn't have a single campfire as it was pretty much outlawed in southern Utah at the time due to extreme heat and dry conditions.  We survived without our S'mores that week.  But, as you can see, we had a pretty spectacular view.