Our last day in Utah we took a drive to Zion National park. Unfortunately we didn’t get to go on the main scenic drive in the park - as it is closed to private vehicles, accessible via park or private shuttles only. With COVID, timed entry shuttle tickets are now required, some are sold online weeks in advance, or you can try to get a limited number of tickets that are available the day before. Well, we had heard Zion was very busy this week, and if shuttle ticket sales were an indication - it was crazy busy, as tickets were sold out in 5mins or less when I tried to get them... We will do better pre-planning next time... although perhaps it was for the best, as I wasn’t too sure about getting on a busy Public shuttle at this time...
Instead we drove the Zion-Mt Carmel Highway. There were several tunnels along the drive, a couple of short ones and a 1.1 mile long tunnel!
There were several places where you could see out of the tunnel during the drive,
thru windows cut out in the rock.
We had heard about the long tunnel, while it was an engineering feat when built in 1920s, it was not built for the larger vehicles of today.. for example, when a large RV/truck needs to travel thru it, the tunnel is shut down to one way so it is able to drive in the middle of the tunnel to avoid scraping the lower sides! I would not want to drive our coach thru it!
I love driving thru these rock tunnels!
Along this drive we saw the great Arch and Checkerboard Mesa. Of course I took some video of our drive and tunnels to share with you.
We stopped at the Zion Brewery in Springdale before we turned around and headed back to Kanab, Utah.
No hikes for us today, I was still recovering from the Bryce Canyon hike! We expect to revisit this park another time when we can shuttle and hike the main scenic drive - and several other spots/parks we missed in the Utah - something to look forward to.
We have had a great trip, and this is the last post for this adventure as we are eager to get back to Texas to see our family
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