LAST DAY IN ZION – BIKE AND HIKE

                                                                VIRGIN RIVER

THIS ARCH IS IN THE PREVIOUS PHOTO BET YOU CANT SEE IT

LOWER EMERALD POOL AREA

We did not want to join the masses and drive into the canyon so we took to the bikes again and went as far as the Lodge, hiked up to lower Emerald pool, along to the Grotto and back to our bikes along the beautiful Virgin River. This place is so peaceful, but sadly our time is coming to an end so we have to move towards Lake Mead.

COURT OF THE PATRIACHS

LOWER EMERALD POOL

We had a little bit of drama on our last evening in Zion, we are not folk who put the generator on endlessly and the times here for its use are 8 – 10am and 6 – 8pm. We had not used it on a morning but on our last evening we put it on at 6pm. Just after 7pm it stopped, Roy went to investigate and found that the plug had been taken out, we do have a dodgy plug that sometimes vibrates out but it wasn't that one. He put it back on and then about 5 minutes later it went off again, Roy saw a man walking away from it and found that he had actually turned the switch off. It was dark by this time so Roy just called over to leave it alone. After we had eaten Roy went up to have a word with the host who said he would relay it to the Ranger as he was not allowed to speak with people after dark.

We had said we didn't want a fuss and the host led us to believe it would be dealt with in the morning but about 10 minutes later we had a knock on the door and the Ranger was there. He listened and then went over to the site. Anther Ranger drove up at that time. They both drove off and the next knock was from a young guy who came to apologize, he said it was a punk! thing to do and he did not realise there were generator use times. We explained that this was our home and if we did not charge up the batteries they would flatten and we would not be able to use anything. Roy shook his hand and we thanked him for coming over. He said it had shocked him when the Ranger came – I bet it did, I would have been! Talking about it after, I felt a bit sad for the guy but then maybe we had done him a favour as he obviously felt he had a right to pull our plug but soon found out that he had not. All's well that end well! Hearing what goes on over here with young folk going out and shooting random people I had been quite apprehensive when it first happened. Rangers Rule OK!

Well they say the best laid plans etc... all packed up ready to move on but the truck didn't want to! Battery fault, we have two on the Dodge and one was past it, a young German couple hung around to see if we needed a jump off, which we eventually did and we went into Hurricane and bought a new one, so stayed another night, had a pleasant walk on the Pa'rus trail in the hot sun and an enjoyable evening with a Canadian couple from Calgary putting the world to rights!