Since this was our last day in the desert for a while, and we were planning on doing some hiking, we better get an early start before the heat of the day, and with any luck we would be into more temperate climates by the afternoon. We had wanted to take a ride through the Vegas Strip at night on the bike but by the time we got back last night and had dinner, we were too tired to go back out. So this morning, we began our day by riding through the Vegas Strip in the daylight, in fact the early morning daylight.
     The Vegas Strip looks pretty ordinary by day, a little seedy in spots, but mostly pretty nice . There weren't many people walking around, but the sheer size of the buildings and city blocks seemed so big, that I can't imagine that everyone walks from place to place. Neither of us are gamblers, and would prefer not to develop that habit later in life, so there isn't really a lot of attraction in Las Vegas for us.
     Once we made it past the strip, we turned west onto Charleston St/ NV-159 and headed west for about 10 miles.   After about 7 miles, all civilization seemed to stop, and we were back in the mountains and desert again.   It was Saturday morning, so there were many bicycles around, as this is evidently a great place to bike ride on a Saturday morning. It didn't take long and we were at the Visitors Center at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. After getting our passports stamped and getting our t-shirts, we headed out for the scenic road.
     Red Rock Canyon is setup with a 13 mile, one-way, paved loop that takes you back almost to the Visitors Center. There are many turnouts along the way to either take pictures, or to hike your way into the mountains to explore . The views are spectacular, and the red rock is very red in spots, in fact, some of the mountains have red stripes across them. It's very difficult to show up in a picture, the reds are brighter than the picture shows. But mostly, it's difficult to show the size of some of these rocks. But if you look very closely at some of the pictures, you can just make out the tiny people climbing the enormous rocks.
     There are hiking trails throughout the park, but we didn't do much hiking. We knew we had a long ride ahead of us, but mostly, this really isn't the right time of the year to be hiking in the desert. So we stuck close to the overlooks and just did a little climbing around. You could easily spend the day hiking, there is even an around the park trail that's 11.4 miles long.
     Once we got back on the bike, we knew it was going to be a boring day. We are heading to the parks of southern Utah, starting with Zion National Park, and there just aren't any secondary roads out of Las Vegas into southern Utah . We just had to take I-15N for about 126 miles. We resigned ourselves to this fact, and as soon as we reached the outskirts of town, we started looking for somewhere to get coffee and to gas up the bike. Imagine our surprise when the exit sign was advertising for a Dunkin' Donuts! We naturally stopped immediately, and that Dark Roast Iced Coffee was delicious!
     So we turned on the cruise control, turned up the stereo and headed north. The ride was just as boring as expected until about 100 miles in when we reached the Arizona border. It them became obvious why there was only one road. The huge Rocky Mountains were in front of us, and we were looking to see how the Interstate went across, when we realized that there was a narrow, winding passage following the Virgin River Gorge where the cliffs are about 500 feet high on both sides in some spots. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to pull over to take pictures, and worse, there was some road construction going on right in the middle that slowed traffic almost to a stop . Still, it was very impressive to see, and before we knew it, we were on the other side of the mountains. A few miles more and we were in Utah.
     Southern Utah is just chock full of National Parks, National Monuments, National Forests, etc. I'm not sure anyone lives here, it's mostly one park after another. For the next few days, we are zig-zagging through the area seeing as many parks and monuments as we can. Tonight, we are staying in Kanab, Utah just east of Zion National Park. Tomorrow we are off to check out Zion, most of the park is only accessible by shuttle, but at least we should get some good pictures.
     There isn't much to do in Kanab, UT as you might expect, but there just happens to be a really good restaurant next door to our hotel called the Rocking V Cafe, and it's rated #1 by TripAdvisor so it was worth a try. It was Chicken Escalante for me and Deep Dish Enchiladas for Jody. Both were delicious!,

271.4 miles today
13,791.9 miles total

3.482 gallons today
330.162 gallons total