May 13, SW Road Trip Day 4: Arriving in Arizona

Saturday May 13. Today’s activity is getting to Arizona. We will head south on I-70 for our last 17 miles of Interstate highway for more than a week. It’s two or four lane highway for us for a while. The plan is to drive for just over 4 hours (216 miles) to get to Lake Powell.

Our first hour and a half is pretty easy. Once we leave the Interstate, there is very little traffic. When we get to the turn-off to the east that goes to Bryce Canyon, however, we share the road with lots of well-packed vehicles. The sharing of the road lasts for about 50 miles, until we get to the western turn-off to Zion National Park. “What?” you ask, “passing between two of the most scenic parks in the country without stopping? Only 50 miles or so away?” Answer: “Yes. This road trip is mostly for Arizona and New Mexico. If we did the Utah National Parks, we’d have to take another month.” That trip is for another time. Today, we drive to Arizona!

And what a drive it is. We are in red rock country, beautiful hills fairly close and scenic mountains farther off. Lots of bare rock, but also small rivers and creeks. A few trees to add color. Today I am lucky because Amy is driving. I get to look without worrying about keeping the car on the road. We continue down US 89 to our last city in Utah, Kanab. We make a brief stop at the Levi Stewart memorial. Founding father of the town, he suffered a tragedy when one of his wives and 5 of his children died in a house fire. Pretty nice memorial, with spectacular views all around.

At this point we make another “game-time” decision: we will take the scenic alternate to 89, leaving Utah earlier. This will take us a little longer, but will ultimately be a good decision, as the scenery is spectacular. We travel East-Southeast toward the turn-off to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. A late winter means the north entrance is not yet open. The traffic is very light. The ponderosa pine forest that we travel through starts to thin, we turn a bit toward the north, and start to descend into a vast, open valley.

Descent to the Vermillion Cliffs

To the north are the Vermillion Cliffs. Words don’t do justice to the majesty of this terrain. Pictures only remind us what we have seen here. We have to stop a lot by the side of the road to take pictures and to just enjoy the scenery.

Leaving the Vermillion Cliffs behind, we cross the Colorado River (downstream a hundred miles or so  is the Grand Canyon), turn northeast to pass through Page, AZ, cross the river again on the Glen Canyon Bridge and enter the Lake Powell National Recreation Area. We check into the Lake Powell Resort and Marina, take a quick dip in the pool (very cold), then clean up and take a short walk to scope out running areas for Amy in the morning. We rest, then have dinner with a view that rivals Canlis’ in Seattle.

(Except that there is nothing to see once the sun sets!)

One curious item about this area, we don’t know what time it is! Utah follows Mountain Daylight Savings Time. Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time, to have the same clock setting as California. We are about a mile from the Utah Border and there are two Verizon cell-phone towers, one in Utah (closer) and one in Page, Arizona. Amy’s iPad says it’s one time, our cell-phones say it’s another. It wouldn’t matter except for our dinner reservation and the cruise on the lake we are supposed to take tomorrow morning at 9:00. Very curious.