Detour: Zion National Park

this being our first stay in a motel, there were a few advantages: we could leave the place trashed and it wouldn't matter. ;) not really. we just didn't make the beds. YES!!

so we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to our room, and headed to perhaps the ONLY starbucks in utah. we love st. george!



after changing up our car window, we headed to our detour spot: zion national park (thank you, aunt bobbi and uncle dave, for your urging us to go!!). this was absolutely worth the late start. we went ahead and got a year pass to any national park in the country from our friendly park ranger and off we went.

it was amazing. when you're driving there you have a hard time imagining anything very exciting could be coming up around the bend, but the minute we started up the road we were awestruck. the only frustrating part is that the camera just couldn't do it justice. sometimes i felt like just throwing it out the window, because i knew it just wasn't capturing the glorious world that rose up around us. this terrain is so unique for me. i've never seen anything like it.

i guess maybe that's part of why utah struck me so much with wonder. i love colorado--it's spectacular. but i grew up in the alps. i know mountains. it doesn't mean i'm over them, it's just that i'd never witnessed land like this before.

i've been collecting bits of the states as we go through--flowers, rocks. i got some river rocks from the meramec in MO and some pebbles when we crossed the border into utah (and i had to pull over to take a picture of the sign). i decided i wanted a real piece of utah. something that would really represent what we saw. i found what i have affectionately named "Big Rock" Utah. he has a companion, pictured below, almost a miniature of him that i found that i named "Little Rock" Utah.

at one part of the drive there was one of many viewpoints that advertised checkerboard mesa. we decided to pull over and see what all the hubbub was about. it was about this:

at first, we didn't really understand why this was SO particularly interesting, although it was lovely. but then sara read about it and it turns out that the horizontal lines on the rock are a fairly common weathering occurence, but the vertical lines, particularly as regular as they are here (thus creating the "checkerboard" look) are extremely rare.

there are no sufficient words to describe this place. if you are EVER in the vicinity, go. it's worth it. God's fingerprints are all over it. we were so overwhelmed with the creativity and care of our Creator.

on our way back to get on the road, we made a necessary stop in virgin, utah. don't go making any assumptions about the fact that we're not IN the jail. we just didn't want to pay the admission. we figured hanging out in front of it counts.

we live in a beautiful world, folks. i'm beginning to understand america.

--susi&sara