Fredonia, AZ to Zion National Park, UT

The ride to Zion was relatively short, but because AZ does not participate in DST we lost an hour crossing the line into UT. David, Arden, Hannah and I crossed the state line together and continued at a steady pace because we wanted to get to Zion early enough to hike. We made lunch a quick stop and immediately after made turn that took us uphill towards the park. Stephanie and Alex were supposedly ahead of us and had money to pay for all of our entrance to the park. Hannah hopped on the struggle bus soon after lunch so we headed on as 3 without her.

We got a text from Jack in the van saying there was a small problem but no one had service to call him, so we headed on to the park entrance. At the gate we explained Bike and Build and that two riders should have been in to pay for us already. The woman let us in with no problem. Which we later learned was funny because Alex and Steph had failed to make a turn on the cue sheet and ended up in Bryce Canyon National Park and had to turn around. Meaning...no bikers had been through to pay for us. Haha, oh well! The ride after entering the park was beautiful. The road wound through and down into the Canyon and barely required any pedaling, which is always a favorite of mine. Getting to our campsite required going through 2 tunnels. One was short and accessible by bicycle but the other was very long and was illegal for passage by bike. However, hitchhiking was not only allowed, but encouraged. So we asked a friendly couple with a pickup if they would mind taking us through the tunnel. They didn't mind so the 3 of us hopped in. The tunnel felt like a ride and had small windows that peeked out into the Canyon.

We were the first group into the park and as soon as we dropped our bikes off at the campsite we headed out for a hike on a trail that ended up being perfect for the 3 of us and had awesome views.

Dinner was a hot mess as no on started cooking til around 7. And once it did get started only one person from dinner crew was there. We left our big pot somewhere so we had to borrow one, the rice burned, but we first spent twenty minutes trying to get the stove set up. When dinner crew finally did return tensions were running high and hungry.

A few of us headed out to the town later that night but it was an early evening as we had biking to do in the morning.

Summary: Zion's views kick Grand Canyon out of the water. We could look up at everything from our campsite!