East Zion

After that nice hike, it was time for some lunch!  I thought the park ended right at the eastern end of the tunnel but after looking at the map, I realized the east entrance was a few miles further down Hwy 9.  We headed east on Hwy 9 thinking we might find a picnic area but all we found was just more beautiful Zion! 

The cliffs, rocks, canyons, hills and mountains were so varied in color and texture as well as shape...like these.

Don't you think they kind of look like sand dunes?  That's what they were millions of years ago.

We continued driving out to the eastern entrance of the park without finding any picnic areas.  We turned around and headed back west passing by Checkboard Mesa.

Since there we didn't find any picnic areas, we just pulled off at a viewpoint and ate our lunch in the car.  Not a bad view...don't you agree?

There were several places where we would see arches in the cliffs like this one.

Did you notice the beautiful deep blue skies?  Except for it getting a little chilly at night (in the 20's where we were camped in Cedar City), the weather was perfect.  And the leaves???

Just about perfect!  We drove to another pull-off where we could walk down to a dry creek bed to get some more pictures of the beautiful fall trees, on the beautiful rocks with the beautiful blue sky. 

We had to walk over this "frozen" sand dune to get to the creek bed.

The Thinker.

We continued driving back west on Hwy 9...

...and back through the tunnel.

The tunnel had this big window which we could see from down below. 

As we started back down the road from the tunnel, we came to the big arch...

that we had walked to the top of on the Canyon Overlook trail.  Do you see the people way up at the top?

We stopped at the visitor center to get more information about the shuttle that goes into Zion Canyon.  Since it was getting late in the afternoon, we decided to come back Sunday to take the shuttle into Zion Canyon. 

It sure is beautiful here!