Zion

The last time I'd been to Zion National Park, it was on my honeymoon, our next to last stop before heading home.  We ate a late lunch in the Zion lodge, walked a trail back to the Narrows, then headed to Las Vegas to spend the night. 


This time, my son and I had four days planned there.  Tuesday dawned and we slept in, mainly because we could.  This was our planned day to explore Zion.  Since my last visit, Zion has instituted, much like other highly visited parks, a shuttle bus system that transports visitors to various spots in the park and relieving the park of the multitude of cars that descend upon them in the summertime.  


After visiting the visitors center near the campground, we boarded a shuttle bus and headed into the canyon.  Zion, like most national parks, has to be walked along the trails to fully appreciate it.  The canyons, very steep walled, block out direct sunlight until much after 7:30 or so in the morning and do the same at night.  The photo above was taken just before 8:00 AM one morning just after the light started to hit the walls of the canyon.

The further you go back into the canyon, the closer the walls are, and the cooler the temperatures are.  This was really important because the heat would hit triple digits all four days we were there.  We stopped at the old visitors center, which was now a museum, watched a movie about the park, then headed back out to catch the next shuttle which took us to other viewpoints and trail heads.  


We stopped at the Court of the Patriarchs, got our picture taken together by other campers, learned a little about the geology of the park, then decided to head back to camp for lunch.  At that point we decided that we'd hike back since there was a well used trail that we could follow.  


Sunscreen had already been applied and hats were on as we headed out along a trail that followed pretty closely to the Virgin River.  We passed an open area that had once been used as a pen for desert bighorn sheep when they were being reintroduced to the park.  

We crossed over the river on well constructed bridges three or four times.  Most of the erosion in the park happens on about 14 days when the Virgin River is in flood stage.  Thunderstorms in the surrounding hills cause flash flooding which causes the river to become an erosional giant.  Today, we weren't worried, but I was impressed with the solid construction of the bridges and thought that even still, I wouldn't want to be on one of those bridges during a flash flood.


After lunch we ended up lounging around the campsite in the small shade we had, then later, when it was a little cooler, took the shuttle up to the Weeping Rock, something I'll touch on a little bit more in detail in one of my next installments.