Yesterday I happened to think about 5 mm. I can convert to Imperial and visualize because of the kind of work that I do. Oh that’s right, I work for a living. When you’re on vacation it’s easy to completely forget about work. I suppose that’s what they mean by the term getting away from it all. I’ve definitely gotten comfortable here. Although I’ve been to Zion before, my first drive through the east side a little over a week ago didn’t bring a lot of familiarity. Sure I recognized some things, but I didn’t have context. Now when I drive through I’ll spot lots of things and think, “I’ve been down there”, or “I’ve been up there”, or (fill in the blank) is in that direction. The east side has become home to me. It’s a shame to think that I’m leaving tomorrow and that the next time I visit the scenery all along the road will not bring immediate recognition of exactly where I am.

The park was much less crowded this morning than I would have expected during a holiday weekend with free admission. A lot of people did show up a little bit later. Once again I found myself in the main canyon during a weekend. Since I had already covered most of the hikes I had planned I mostly did the tourist thing today. Of course I did have the option of making another attempt at the West Rim Trail. The worst case scenario would be finding myself at my destination right when knee pain set in. The possibility of having to descend two thousand feet with knee pain pretty much nixed that idea.

I spent some quality time with does up on the maple grove hillside south of the Weeping Wall.

I returned to the Temple of Sinewava to see if the color had gotten any better. It really hadn’t, so I just walked alongside the river for a little bit without taking any pictures.

I descended to Pine Creek from the second switchback. Trying to make my way upstream was tough going. Man there are a lot of boulders down there. I didn’t really get very far before I was in a spot where I was standing on a rock in the creek needing to jump to another which wasn’t very far. But it was slanted and to slip (not very likely) would mean falling into water deep enough to ruin my camera gear. The prospect of more and more of that made me turn around. This section of Pine Creek has been the only stream with running water. For some reason it had been easier following dry drainages up to this point.

I spent a little bit of time at the visitor center courtyard. I’ve always thought that they did a really nice job. I also went to the Human History Museum. I found it interesting that they had a sign stating that the bottle filling station was closed for the season. I suppose that must be the dry season. No one drinks water at this time of year right? It wasn’t a problem though since there’s a drinking fountain right around the corner.

I really needed to hike by this point. The Watchman Trail has always been somewhat low on my list of priorities. For this trip I had it designated as an unlikely possibility. But hey it was there and so was I, so off I went. For the most part it was what I had expected – something that I would only do once. However I have to say that I really enjoyed the view from up top of that little butte. I spent quite a while up there just taking it in. I would have enjoyed it regardless of the situation, but I suspect that part of the allure was that it was pretty much my last hurrah at Zion. On the way down I was thinking, “Hey you know I could drive over to the Northgate Peaks trail on my way out of town tomorrow. That’s only a four mile hike.” But it’s slightly out of my way, so I guess that my hiking is over for the time being. I could also go to Valley of Fire on my way to Las Vegas, but I’m just going to wait until December.

So that’s it. I’ll have a couple of days of R&R before I head home. I probably need the rest by now. Oh and that reality thing? I don’t need to worry about reality right now. I’m still on vacation.