We just finished spending a couple days near Zion National Park. On Friday we left our home in Gilroy and drove most of the way to Las Vegas, staying at Buffalo Bills for the night. We wanted to get to Zion early enough on Saturday so we could do something there before dark. It took us longer than expected but still arrived there before noon.

Ann and I decided to go on a bike ride so we drove the car back to Virgin and parked there while we rode up Kolob Canyon. It was a beautiful ride, but the weather was hot, in the mid 90′s. It is a steep climb but we still made it up more than half way to the top before we decided to head back down.

Here is the graph of the climb.

The ride up and back ended up being close to 32 miles, with nearly 2,500 feet of climbing. A good ride for such a hot day.

After returning to the hotel, we went of a refreshing dip in the pool. Ann did some laps and I just kind of cooled off. We tried to go into the hot tup but it was too hot for that so we went back to the pool.

We really enjoyed dinner that evening and ate at a neat, but expensive restaurant. The food was very tasty and a nice reward for riding in such heat. The

The next morning we got up and watched a stage of the Tour de France on my computer. I had installed a device called a Slingbox on our home Tivo system so I could control and watch it over the internet. After zipping through that stage we decided we still had time before John and Amy arrived so we jumped on the bikes and headed into Zion National Park, up to the end of the canyon.

It was cooler weather than the prior day and a lot of fun. Coming back down the canyon we were going so fast that we caught the bus that carries the tourists into the canyon (they don’t allow you to drive your car) so we had to slow down and follow it to the mouth of the canyon.

Categories: Cycling, Vacation
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