Saturday, April 9, 2011 - Zion National Park, Springdale UT
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Five pm at South Campground, Zion National Park, April 9, 2011
Just in time
Just in time the Feds agreed on a budget late last night and Zion is open. But nearly everybody left the campground yesterday and today. It's about 5 pm and this campground is usually filled by now. Not today. Question: so was it the atrocious weather or the threat of a shutdown that sent them packing? Anyway, I'm pleased not to have to travel up the hill over the weekend before the storm clears.
Just in time I shot the above picture not 5 minutes before a blustery snow squall blew through - complete with thunder and lightning. It had partly cleared earlier and it was nice to see the mountains again. Not nice enough to get me out with the camera though. Darn.
Night camp
Site 112 - South Campground, Zion National Park, Springdale UT
- Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - good signal
- Go to Zion National Park website
- Locate Zion South Campground on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69