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| Virgin River, Zion National Park |
After waving goodbye to the Valley of Fire, we cut through
the northwest corner of Arizona into Utah, on our way to Zion National Park.
Once we got there, it became obvious that Zion is incredibly popular, and
already very crowded. The campgrounds were completely full, so no chance of
staying the night. The majority of the year the roads through Zion are closed
to car traffic, and the only way to get around is by taking the park shuttle,
which is convenient but makes it hard to really see the places between stops.
After taking the shuttle to a few trailheads for short hikes, we declared Zion
a bust and kept heading east.
Just outside of the park we saw a small herd of bighorn sheep
and pulled over to see if we could get a better look. Just as we were climbing
back in the RV, I caught movement through the trees, and realized there was a
larger herd grazing in a hidden pocket of rock. A scramble onto a steep sandstone rockface, and
several stern warnings to myself to not forget where I was, and we had an
excellent view of a family group settling down for the night.
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| Bighorn sheep family |
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| Bighorn sheep ewe |
Once we had our fill of sheep-watching, we
headed to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, just down the road, only to find
that it was also full. A quick conversation with a ranger netted us information
about a little-known and almost completely unmarked BLM campground on a side
road a few miles away. It turned out to be one of the best campgrounds of the
trip so far: very small, clean, quiet, and our spot was out of sight of the
main loop, so it was almost like having a private campground.
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| Coral Pink Sand Dunes |
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| Red-breasted Nuthatch with seed |
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