Last week, we went on a spur-of-the-moment drive through beautiful Zion National Park.  Debbie, a club member in Phoenix, said that she was driving her Solstice up to Utah to teach a class for two weeks, so I decided to take a quick weekend trip with her, which for me was an opportunity to visit family in Salt Lake City (including a son who had just graduated from college and was headed to China in two weeks to teach ESL).

On the way up, Debbie's Solstice crossed the 40,000 mile mark, and my SKY crossed 40K on the way back, so you could certainly say that neither of us are shy about taking these roadsters on trips, including this nearly 2,000 mile weekend jaunt.  With gas prices so high, one might naturally pause before making such a trip, but to paraphrase a saying, "Life is not measured in Miles Per Gallon, but in the miles that take your breath away."

On the way up, we decided to detour along North Rim of the Grand Canyon, following the Vermillion Cliffs and skirting down Marble Canyon and crossing the mighty Colorado River at Lees Crossing.  On the radios, we talked about what a huge challenge this trip must have been for covered wagons, and how still today, we were driving dozens of miles out of our way just to get to a place to cross the Colorado river.

Shortly after entering Utah, we turned left into what is considered to be the "back way" into Zion.  This was the downhill route, and for Debbie, the first time she had been to Zion's since she was a teenager.  Personally, my memories are of doing this in a motorhome with my kids, waiting in long RV lines for the multi-mile tunnel to clear so that we could ride single file through the middle of the tunnel as there was no way to get two RVs past each other inside the tunnel.

When we arrived at the bottom of the canyon and dropped into the book store, we started to see signs and information about the 2009 Centennial, and we scrapped our earlier discussion of doing a ride this Fall in favor of a centennial trip with a larger group in 2009.

So, for the rest of the trip up to Salt Lake City, we starting planning and scheming, at least a weekend trip to Zion's in 2009, and possibly a weeklong trip through the Grand Circle (Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Grand Staircase, and Canyonlands National Park).

Officially, the Centennial ceremony will be held on July 31, 2009, but there are events happening all year long.  Another thought is to do this in conjunction with the opening of the Hoover Dam bridge in April of 2009, maybe drive up across the dam (for the last time) and return across the new bridge.

On a side note, I want to reiterate that it is REALLY cool being a GM Roadster member.  When I arrived at my cousin's house in Utah, the family was having a BBQ to celebrate their daughter's graduation from high school.  After the new graduate oogled over my roadster, I tossed her the keys and told her to go for a spin.  A short while later, she returned and said that a neighbor flagged her down on the drive, saying that he had the same kind of car.  So, her mom and I went out to the house and it turned out that the owner was a GMR member who had attended the Las Vegas Nationals, and he and his wife invited us into their backyard for some baby back ribs which were just coming off the BBQ.  After discussing the beautiful canyons and roads in the area, the next morning, we took two cars up Cottonwood Canyon for a Sunday brunch at Snowbird, then I drove with an old business partner up Ogden Canyon, and ate at a restaurant where our outdoor table was actually over the water, and then Debbie and I drove up Provo canyon up to Heber, stopping at Sundance Ski Resort on the way back before joining our new GMR friends again for an Italian dinner in Provo.

Back in Arizona, at an impromptu club dinner gathering last night, the waitress asked us how we all knew each other.  We told her that we all had the same kind of car, and that we "flagged each other down."  Martin said that he followed one of the couples at the table till he caught up with them at the IKEA parking lot, and the waitress shook her head, but we all laughed because that is truly how most of us met.

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