Neither snow, nor rain, nor cold, nor hail of last night kept us from making our appointed Zion rounds today.
As we sat in the dark, listening to 6 hours of roof pounding rainplops and hammering hail … wishing we had enough bandwidth to stream the season finale of Game of Thrones … and wondering if this was a prelude for the week to come … we thanked our lucky stars that at least we had come down from the high altitude alpine conditions of Bryce where snow was accumulating and temperatures were forecast in the 20’s and 30’s for the week.
As we decided to wait until morning to attempt the GOT finale and retired to the back bedroom, we saw the flashlights and headlights of tenters breaking camp in the middle of the storm and driving off to presumably dryer digs.
Morning broke, rain kept falling, the parking lot was empty, the camping loop was at 25% capacity, and a thick mist hung over Watchman campground. Still wishing we could stream Game of Thrones, Eric the Hot Spot Savant figured out how to maximize the last 2GB of data and put us in the know as the finale rolled on our 32 inch HDTV. It’s not like the 65 inch 4K at home, but it is located in a rolling condo in Zion canyon, so that’s better. We think they could have saved GoT season 8 by filming it in the canyon. It would not have helped the plot, but you may not have noticed with Drogon cutting through the narrow canyon passages. Nah, nevermind, nothing could have saved that plot.
Some campgrounds advertise free WIFI, but you can be sure that the bandwidth will be 1990’s dial-up modem levels. You can stream on your phone, but GoT on your phone? – lame. Satellite dishes on your RV roof come with expensive subscription services that you only need when you are on the road. The answer is to set up your own network in the coach using a pocket router, hot spot, and Roku to maximize the cell phone plan that you are paying for anyway.
The Verizon Hot Spot with unlimited data gives 15 GB of high-speed connectivity wherever you can pull a bar of coverage which is near everywhere there is civilization. Folks boon-docking on BLM land in the middle of the desert are another story. With the ROKU, we pick and choose our subscription services and get 8 or so episodes of streaming per month. This month, we sampled HBO and CBS on trial subscriptions to catch Survivor and GoT penultimate and final epsiodes.
While Eric tended to the waterlogged campsite resurrecting the collapsed dining tent and drying the bikes, Sheri puzzled Sloths at the dining table and stayed dry. Around noon, we had both had enough of our activities and decided to see Zion by tram and foot on the hunt for pop-up waterfalls.
The first 40 minute ride gave us this beauty at the last stop – #9 – Temple of Sinawava. Doing the walk-ride combo, all in we found 6 waterfalls, logged 4 miles hiking along the Virgin river and negotiated a contract on the sale of our house on one Verizon bar of coverage and 18% battery 6 miles deep into Zion canyon at the historic Zion Lodge. It wasn’t a washout after all!