i ****in love my Suburban!!
the wife and i went back up to utah in Daisy today. she ran like a top for another 400mi at an average of 14mpg. we got a late start, didn't get out of town til 8am or so, getting my wife out of bed before 7am is not easy! we headed straight for Zion national park, what a waste of time that turned out to be. i love that place, have since i was a little kid but it pisses me off to see how crowded and commercialized it's become. we paid $25 to drive through the gate, at which time we were informed that there was no parking available in the canyon and we'd have to park in town and ride a shuttle into the canyon. so i decided to drive up the canyon a ways and take my chances at finding a parking spot to do some hiking. then we see that the upper half of the canyon is only open to tour buses and shuttles. so we're stuck going back to town and riding a damn shuttle, which we wanted no part of. if we wanted to wait in line and ride in shuttle buses, we'd have gone down to the strip here in Vegas... so, frustrated, we left to go find something more scenic. i did get a few cool photos before we left though.
there's a 100+ foot drop on the other side of that curb.
no more curb.
so with Zion behind us, we stopped for a snack and headed the direction we should have in the first place, up towards Kolob Reservoir. the road up to Kolob is awesome, narrow, steep, windy, everything you look for when driving a 7' tall 6000lb truck. there's one switchback that has "5mph" signs leading up to it, super tight, super steep and no guard rails. no pictures, sorry, busy driving... the road winds through the mountains/aspen trees to about 8200' where it ends at the reservoir. i hadn't been there since 2001 and i drove my suburban up there, with 100 something horsepower and a cracked flex plate, on 36" TSLs. this time around was considerably more fun. my wife (Christy) has never been off road in her life and this was the first time i've actually locked Daisy's hubs. the road around the lake was fun, nothing crazy, just some ruts, mud and a few rocks toward the end. i thought it went all the way around the lake but it didn't so i got to drive the whole thing twice, didn't bother me any. Christy was nervous but had a good time, spent a lot of time outside watching me drive. she took some photos, tried to get some video but that didnt work out.
(she had some kinda filter turned on)
she didn't get any decent photos of the rougher stuff, i actually had to drop into 4low once where i had to turn around.
we stopped on the beach, i got out an RC crawler and Christy took some photos.
after we left the lake, we stopped at an over look or two, Christy gathered up some colorful leaves and i pretty much stared at my suburban everywhere we went.
my two favorite girls!
she even drove home, she loves Daisy.
anyway, there's my weak attempt at a trip report, i'll get better at this... haha!
