Zion National Park Adventures

For Spring break this year we decided to go on a road trip. Our first stop was the Grand Canyon, which I wrote about in a post last Friday. On Wednesday of our trip, we packed up and headed over to Zion National Park. Funny story (or not so funny, depending on how you look at it). I initially made the reservations for our camp sites, and double checked the dates with Travis. About two weeks after I made those reservations, when we were figuring out our finals schedule for school, I realized we booked the camp sites all a week earlier than we planned on being there. By the time I went back to change our reservation for the Zion campground, the dates we wanted were booked up. So we were “winging” it as far as finding a campsite, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one right? WRONG. It is spring break and everyone wants to hike Angel’s landing and the narrows!!
When we got to Zion, the first 3 campsites we went to were full. We were thiiiis close to calling it quits, renting a hotel room for the night (ahhh a nice hot shower and comfy bed!!), when we came across a camp site that had 2 spots left-WE WILL TAKE IT! The camp sites were really close together, but the showers and bathrooms were clean and all we really need was space to pitch our tent. It’s not like we were going to be spending a lot of time at the campsite.
The main thing to do in Zion is hike. They have a free shuttle bus that takes you to multiple stops, all of which have at least 2 hikes. There are hikes for everyone, at all skill levels. The main one we accomplished was Angel’s landing. I’ll write a more detailed post about that one later. The other big hike at Zion is The narrows. We were told you needed a permit to hike it, so we didn’t plan on hiking it. We did do the short mile hike leading up to the Narrows. We noticed so many people hiking it and realized a permit wasn’t necessary. Well actually you are wading through about 1-2 feet of FREEZING cold water. Travis convinced me to go about 1/4 of the way in, and I needed to convince him to hike back out. The complete hike is about 10 miles round trip, and you definitely need the proper gear to hike it. Just as rafting down the grand canyon was added to our bucket list, hiking the narrows is also added.
The weather was warmer than it was at the Grand Canyon. The only down fall was that it was pretty windy during the night. Zion has a little town at the South entrance to the park, with some of the best coffee shops and a horribly over priced supermarket that makes Whole Foods prices look like a steal. We had a lot of fun exploring Zion and marveling at the creations that have been made by nature. I’m so glad T loves to go on these little adventures with me.