We left Monument Valley at the start of a rainstorm—the first significant rain we’ve had on the whole trip. By the time we approached Zion NP (see below) the rain had stopped and there were a few blue breaks in the clouds. We could not have had better weather for the trip had we designed it ourselves.

Between Monument Valley and Zion lies the town of Page, AZ and the Glen Canyon Dam, responsible for creating Lake Powell out of some of the most beautiful landscape in the state. We decided to stop for some photos and a trip to the visitor’s center, which was quite interesting on several levels. Lake Powell is still quite low, although it has recovered some from the drastic drought of the past few years. You can see the normal water level in a few of the images. There are more in the photo archive.

Ahead lay Zion NP. Zion is the third most visited national park, and today we proved it by driving—here I’m using the term in the sense that we were all in the car, but the car was not necessarily moving at any given time—from Monument Valley through Zion with every attempt to stop and do some hiking, but pretty much all we did was stop. We made our way to the Bumbleberry Inn and decided, based on the LONG line of folks waiting to get a shuttle bus into the park, that we’d seen enough and that was we saw was glorious enough in its own right to call it a day and decompress a bit before dinner. It’s the last day of the trip, and we’ve seen and done so much that it felt good to all of us. We’ll content ourselves with some gorgeous photos and come back another time. Maybe.