White

The world was white this morning. Snow dropped to the elevation of Springdale, coating the ground with (what seemed to be) a couple of inches of white.

The Zion Mt. Carmel road was icy, and the road into the canyon was closed at Zion Lodge. That wasn't surprising, Denise had already figured that she would need to stay on low trails today. She walked the Pa'rus trail from the visitor center to the end-point where she continued walking up the road to the Court of the Patriarchs. Then she turned around and walked back again. I bounced a bit down the trail but I rode in the camera bag for the most part. The trail was a paved one and it was just wet - but wet is cold on my feet. And Denise doesn't always stay on the trail; she wandered through the snow, and she followed quite a few of the little trails that led down to the river too.

The nice thing about walking up the road was that Denise could stop whenever she saw something interesting.

This morning's precipitation was mainly flurries, no need for an umbrella. It's so much easier for Denise to play with her camera when she doesn't need to worry about the lens getting covered with drops of water.

We popped out of the park in the early afternoon to get a nice bowl of hot soup. That was a good warming stop, a quick respite from today's chilly temperatures. The roads were clear and dry when we returned, so Denise decided to drive up the switch-backed road leading to the east so we could drive through the Zion-Mount Carmel tunnel. The tunnel is two narrow lanes, dark except for several windows cut in the side of the canyon. It's too bad that there is no place to stop and walking through the tunnel is not allowed. I know that Denise would have liked to have stopped at the windows. She had to be satisfied with our two quick drives through the tunnel though.

The clouds were low this morning, but by afternoon occasional patches of blue started popping up. Late afternoon sun lit up the mountains.

The forecast for tomorrow calls for sunshine and warming temperatures, good for one more morning wandering Zion. Then it will be time to head back to Las Vegas and an appointment with an eastbound airplane.

--- Rover