Friday, June 23, 2006 - Zion, Utah

Today we got up early and drove to Hermit’s Rest to meet David, Bob’s friend that he met on the trail.  David is the one who helped Bob when he was hiking.  Since David’s friend had deserted him at the last minute, David had to make arrangements to get home another way.  We drove to El Tovar to have a celebratory breakfast with David.  During breakfast, David told us about himself.  He has his doctorate in Eastern medicine and is an acupuncturist who lives in Boulder but loves to travel around the world hiking. 

After breakfast, David wanted to walk to the Bright Angel Lodge to see if his friend had sent his box of belongings, including his wallet and credit cards.  He had.  Then he wanted to go to Maswik Lodge to check on his travel arrangements.  Finally he wanted to go to the campground/Laundromat to take a shower and change clothes.  After dropping him off for his shower, we went back to Trailer Village to hitch up our trailer.  We returned to pick up David and dropped him off at Bright Angel Lodge where he was going to hang out until 5:00 when his bus left for Phoenix.

We then started our trip to Zion National Park. We reached the eastern boundary of the Grand Canyon around 12:30.  The trip took us around the Grand Canyon north to Utah. We arrived at Zion in the late afternoon. In order to enter the park, there are two tunnels that we had to pass through. The second tunnel required one way traffic because of the width of our trailer. All RVs must make the trip in one way traffic. After we exited the tunnel, we registered at the campground. Watchman Campground has electric connections, but not water or sewer. Because of our late arrival, we were given a site in complete sunlight. It would be very hot. We asked if we could switch sites the next day and the ranger said we probably could find another site if there were vacancies. Each site has the last day of occupancy on a post by the road. We decided to look tomorrow morning for a site in the shade. In addition, we are downwind of the dump station and the smell is very unpleasant.