Saturday, November 5th
After two weeks in Salt Lake City it was time to take my leave and I headed out in the morning, taking a route roughly parallel to I-15 (mostly on the 6) down South and a bit West to Hurricane (pronounced locally as “hurra-kin”) where I’d be staying for the next week and exploring Zion National Park. On the way I ended seeing signs for Parowan Gap, and took a small detour to see more petroglyphs!
The drive down was lovely. There were gaps of many miles between gas stations, so once again I was playing a bit of the “sure hope the station is big enough to have premium gas” game. The small gas tank on this scooter does make it harder to tour in the southwest.
As I was nearing Ceder Springs I saw signs for “Parowan Gap” just a few miles off the road. I hadn’t decided on the end of my route, to truly avoid highways I’d need to take a wide loop to the West vs. the much more direct getting on I-15 for a few miles. So I figured I’d take a detour now, which meant I could take the more direct route and still not be too early to check in. It turns out Parowan Gap is just a small canyon where native americans, and then later white immigrants, had drawn all over the rocks. I’m a huge petroglyph fan; there’s something totally fascinating about drawings left hundreds of years ago from a totally different culture.
Anyhow, a few pictures. Probably not worth much unless you view them in larger sizes.
I did end up going from here pretty much straight to my Airbnb destination, which worked well. Spending hours on the motorbike in the desert leaves one a bit sun stunned and gritty. It was fun to near my destination and start to see red rock cliffs rise off to my left. I was close to one of my favorite parks: Zion.