Our first day in Fredonia was a double-header – a very long day.

In the morning we headed North to Utah for a jeep tour of Peekaboo Slot Canyon in Zion National Park.  We made sure we arrived at the appropriate time, as Utah observes daylight savings time, while Arizona does not.

We met our enthusiastic and outgoing guide Keith, and got in the tour company’s bright yellow Gladiator.  It was similar to our jeep with a bit more off-roading chops – wider and more aggressive tires, ability to lock differentials, etc.  We drove a short distance on roads, then headed off on an unmarked trail we would have had difficulty following on our own if we didn’t get stuck in our jeep.

The walk through the slot canyon was about 2 miles roundtrip, and was fascinating.  We took lots and lots of pictures, but the gist of it was a canyon that was 70 feet tall at times but narrow enough that two people could not pass at the same time in places.  Keith pointed out geological foundations, and discussed how bad it would be to be in the canyon in a flash flood.

We ate a great lunch at Wild Thymes, which was one of Keith’s recommendations, but we got there too early.  So to kill some time we went to the Little Hollywoodland museum and lots of other things (check the link for the entire title).  We wandered around the movie sets and read descriptions of the many movies shot around Kanab for a half hour or so.

After lunch, it was a short teams meeting and nap for Scott, while Tom worked on planning.  The day before we had discussed visiting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, about an hour and a half away.  Scott thought it would be good to eat dinner there, as Tom wanted to take pictures of the Canyon at sunset.  Turns out there are few alternatives to the Grand Canyon Lodge. It also turns out that online they only had reservations at 4:30PM, 4:45PM or 9PM – way too late to eat and return to Fredonia.  So we left the camper around 1PM and visited several scenic overlooks before arriving at the lodge at 4:45pm just in tune for dinner.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is less visited than the South Rim by far, but it seemed like almost everybody was either hiking somewhere or at the Grand Canyon Lodge/Visitors center.

We had an acceptable meal with great views, then killed several hours waiting for the sunset.  Turned out it was not that spectacular, but Tom hiked around and Scott finished several chapters on his Kindle book reading on his phone.

We made it back to our campsite too tired to do much but fall asleep, leaving this blog for Saturday night.