Friday - day 2 (continued)

After some shopping and a break at the Visitor's Center, we returned to the car and headed toward the east park entrance and the mile long Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel. We stopped a few times for photos on both sides of the tunnel. The terrain was interesting and quite different on each side of the mountain. The east side was much more desert like.

We had no plans for lunch, but were passing a ranch resort with a herd of buffalo and noticed that it had a restaurant called the Buffalo Grill. They placed us at a nice table, by a window and we had a fun waiter. Linda had a buffalo burger and Nancy & Mary had buffalo fajitas. I went with BBQ short ribs, so I could sample something different. The food was all quite good, but I thought the prices were a bit high. Our lunch came to $90 with tax.

We really lucked out with this restaurant. When I was later searching on Google, there were only two other restaurants of any kind on this stretch of highway.

We drove on north and east, passing through Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest. The red stone was quite attractive and the road passed though a couple of very short tunnels. It made a nice precursor to Bryce National Park and if we had more time, we would have spent some of it there.