Zion National Park

Our RV park is in Panguitch, Utah, which is near four national parks or monuments.  Since we're only here for five days, this has required us to spend just one day in each of these spectacular parks.

Today we visited Zion National Park.  It's a dramatic series of mountains and rock formations aligned along a canyon formed by the Virgin River in southwest Utah.  Geologically, Zion and the other three parks near us - Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon and Escalante - is near the northwest corner of the Colorado Plateau, which has been the source of formation of many of our country's most spectacular scenery.  Grand Canyon is at the southwest corner.  Los Alamos and Bandelier National Monument are at the southeast corner.

One word on the "dark side of Zion" is in order.  Today was the first day of the Memorial Day holiday.  Zion is one of the nation's most popular national parks.  As a consequence, we had more tourists to contend with than we could handle.  The trails were crowded, to the point that it wasn't very pleasant to constantly have to dodge oblivious sight-seers who were convinced they were the only people on the trail.  We arrived at the visitor center at 10:00 am, and by then the visitor center parking lot was completely full.  Furthermore, the park is not very well signed for drivers, so available parking was not well identified or managed.  Luckily, we had a backup parking strategy, which we employed, and were able to walk a half mile or so to the visitor center from where we parked the truck.

Having got past the most annoying part of the visit, we concentrated on our plans to see the scenery.  While exploration of the backcountry of Zion would take many days or weeks, one day was enough to see all of the "front country" sights.  After stopping at the visitor center, we started at the north end of the canyon and worked our way south back toward the visitor center.

At the north end, the canyon narrows to a virtual slot canyon.  A 2-mile paved trail is available to reach the narrowest parts of the canyon, but beyond that a hiker needs to be prepared to wade the stream in order to get back further into the canyon, but if prepared, a hiker can penetrate another 9 miles upstream.  We weren't prepared, nor did we have time for such a long hike, so we contented ourselves with reaching the end of the paved trail.  Many other tourists did the same thing.  Here are some of them enjoying the spectacular views:

South of the narrows is a location called "Weeping Rock," which is where water seeps naturally from overhanging slate ledges after having seeped through sandstone from the plateau above.  Once the water seeps out, it runs down the rock face in some places, falls over ledges in others, but in each case fosters growth of a nearly tropical lushness and variety of plants.  Here are some clinging to the rock wall:

After Weeping Rock, we stopped at The Grotto to begin a 5 mile hike up the Kayenta Trail to see the Upper, Middle and Lower Emerald Pools.  As we climbed up from the valley floor, we could see the Virgin River winding southward through Zion Canyon:

The Upper Emerald Pool was a shady, cool, green respite from the sunny, arid climb.  Here is a photo of Kathy and 100 of her closest friends enjoying the pool:

The view up the sheer sandstone walls from the Upper Emerald Pool is striking in itself:

Descending from the Upper Emerald Pool, we had to hike under an overhanging rock ledge.  The scale of this ledge is apparent from the small size of the hikers in the photo below:

Our hike finished at the Virgin River, just across from Zion Lodge, which was built in 1924 and designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who also designed structures at Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon.  As we crossed over Virgin River on the bridge, we could see down the canyon --

-- and up the canyon, both views being equally breathtaking.

We stopped at Zion Lodge to have a small meal and a beer and to cool down from our hike.  Many park visitors had found the shade of the large trees on the front lawn of the lodge and were using it to maximum advantage:

Having finished our main hike, we continued down the canyon on the park shuttle, and stopped to view the Court of the Patriarchs, which is a formation of three sandstone cliffs named by Mormon visitors for the biblical patriarchs (left to right) Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Jacob is the white cliff behind the smaller red Moroni Cliff on the right):

We ended our visit with a 2 mile walk down the Pa'rus Trail, which runs along the banks of the Virgin River.  The word "pa'rus" means "bubbling, tumbling water," and that is exactly what we encountered as we strolled the trail.  Here are views up and down the bubbling tumbling water:

After about 8 hours in the park, we headed home, only to be stopped in our tracks by a mountain sheep calmly munching grass along the roadside, ignoring all the visitors and their vehicles as we passed.

Arriving back at the RV 11 hours after we had left this morning, we felt we had gotten to know Zion National Park well, and we think we know what backcountry trails we would like to explore if we visit again.  Except next time it will not be on a holiday and will be without all the other tourists!