Here's a peek at some of the fun. (It looks like video embeds don't work, so you'll have to jump to Youtube via the links below.)
360Fly camera view while driving through the Virgin River Gorge
Video highlights
We stopped at the Seven Magic Mountains art installation before we got to Las Vegas, and that was a fun diversion. So was the trip to Hoover Dam (which we've threatened to do before, but had never made good on). We also had a little fun evening in Vegas, though that wasn't our primary goal. After making it through there, we parked at a Wal-Mart in Mesquite for the first night's stop.
The rest of the time we stayed at the Zion River Resort which was about a dozen miles from the Zion National Park entrance, and it was a great campground. Nice, clean, quiet, and very modern.
A couple of highlights were seeing the bighorns on the east side of Zion (which is very different from the main part of the park), and the hike through The Narrows. We rented the canyoneering boots, neoprene socks, and walking sticks from an outfitter just outside the entrance, and it was well worth it. You're hiking through the Virgin River for much of that trip, and the socks keep your feet warm, and the boots drain off excess water.
The only bummer was on the way home, when we had a blowout. That's the first tire I've lost in over six years of making annual laps around the country (something in the neighborhood of 14,000 miles per year). I came home and replaced the stock tires (which I used for last summer's travel) with a set of Goodyear Marathons.
