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The Road to Zion

Las Vegas Trip 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012

On Saturday morning Amanda and I left for a week-long vacation to Las Vegas with a few other stops along the way. We would be spending our first weekend of the trip visiting Zion National Park for the first time. On our drive to Zion we made a couple of stops to visit some rock art.

Our first stop along the way was just off of the Interstate near Richfield where I hiked up to some petroglyphs. There were many spirals found here including these larger ones.

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Richfield Spirals by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

A few smaller spirals and an anthropomorph.

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Faded Spirals by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

Another spiral above.

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Another Spiral by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

There was a small hole in the sandstone overhang that cast a shadow on this petroglyph. It makes me wonder if the dagger of light might line up with the center of the spiral on a particular day and time…perhaps on the equinox or solstice?

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Interactive? by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

After having some lunch in Richfield we continued on and took another short side trip out of Cedar City to the Lions Mouth Cave pictographs. Here’s a stitched panoramic of the main panel found here.

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Lions Mouth Cave Panelramic by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

Here’s a few photos showing a few other views of the pictographs found here.

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Red & Yellow by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

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Lions Mouth Pictographs by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

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Strange Designs by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

After finishing the drive to Zion and checking into our hotel just outside of the park we took an afternoon drive through Zion Canyon to get a nice overview of the park. After taking the short hike up to Weeping Rock we stopped by the Court of the Patriarchs and I liked the light that was currently striking them with the dark branches that seemed to compliment the cliffs in the background.

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Branches & Patriarchs by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

Even though there were no clouds in the sky and no fall colors I decided to take a photo of the last light of the day on The Watchman over the Virgin River anyways.

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The Watchman Sunset by IntrepidXJ, on Flickr

After the sun was down we headed back into town and grabbed some garlic burgers from Oscar’s for dinner which were really good. Then it was back to our hotel so I could get some sleep before sunrise came again on Sunday…especially since we would be losing an hour thanks to Daylight Savings Time.

>> The Road to Zion Photo Gallery

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