Zions and Bryce Canyon National Parks

At the end of September/early October Jarod and I went on a trip to Southern Utah. We wanted to see some of the National Parks and have one last weekend getaway while I wasn't too pregnant to travel. We stayed in St. George and went to Zions National Park first. There were so many beautiful scences and so many pictures but here are a couple of our favorites.

Love the ginormous arch-this was one of many we saw but definately the biggest. We also went through a tunnel that was over a mile long. It was built in the 1920's so it was really small and they only let traffic through one way at a time. It was really neat-they had holes in the tunnel looking out and you could see amazing cliffs and rocks. We had to drive up hundreds of feet of switchbacks to even get to the tunnel (it was little nerve racking). The arch in the picture above was taken on our way up the switchbacks. Zions is very well maintained and they have a shuttle system through part of the park. We parked our car and took the shuttle up the main canyon and got off at all the spots and walked around and looked at all the amazing cliffs-truly a beautiful place.

We also went to the St. George temple and the visitors center they have there. They had just finished painting the temple and it was so bright white! The St. George temple has so much history as the first temple finished in Utah. Something new I learned was that Brigham Young never like the original steeple that was on the temple (it was a lot smaller and looked a little strange on such a big building). Only a few days after he died a lightening storm hit the temple and burned just the steeple down so they had to rebuild it. Everyone says Brigham eventually got his way even after he died.