Zion

                Clare’s executive decision to not camp in Zion due to the weather paid off big time.  The only thing is, not for the reason we thought.  The 109 degree days didn’t appear.  The thunderstorms every day, however, more than made up for the lack of heat.  The Hampton Inn in Springdale worked out very nicely as a substitute. 

                Zion is a fascinating combination of terrains in one park.  On the way in from  Bryce, you go through the Checkerboard Mesa area, desert with slickrock hills and cliffs.  It’s a great area to climb, just difficult enough to be fun, but just easy enough not to kill yourself. 

Then the tunnels, including the mile long one that puts you out at a canyon that you make your way down the side of to the parts of Zion that people mainly come to see.

  

You can’t drive in the main part of the canyon anymore, it’s all shuttle buses, which actually makes it much nicer, as there are not so many idiots on the road.  We took the shuttle as far as you can go, up to the Riverwalk trail.  This leads to the N     arrows, which is a “trail” that basically goes in the river up the canyon until it, of course, narrows into a slot canyon.  It’s prone to flash floods.  Did I mention the thunderstorms?  So that and the lack of desire to get our shoes/socks/pants wet meant we were quite satisfied with the Riverwalk.  It’s a lovely little mile long walk along the shores of the river with trees and grass and then the towering rock walls of the canyon around you.  There are areas of “weeping” rock, where you can see the water coming out of the cracks, and dripping down the side of the wall into a little rainforesty type area at the bottom. 

We did two other hikes in Zion, the Grottoes which is basically just a trail by the side of the road, the only interesting bits being the doe and the wild turkey alongside the trail.  The Emerald pools trail was much more interesting.  We only did the lower trail, there are hard hiking limits with a this family.  At the end of the trail, there’s a “waterfall”(more like a light rain) of about 50 feet into a pool of water at the bottom.  You can stand in the drops and cool off.  You can also see a 2ftX3ft section of the rock wall fall down the hill onto the trail, just as people had walked by.  Erosion still happens people.

  

The rest of our days were spent in the pool or the air conditioned room.  We, as a family, can recommend MeMe’s café in Springdale for some good food.  They made some crepes that were not remotely as frou-frou as you might think they’d be.  The Meat Lovers had ham, bacon, turkey and eggs.  Very good.  Espresso is very big out here, they have little espresso wagons in places.  We’ve seen more shave ice here than in Hawaii. 

As I type this, we’ve just crossed into Arizona (so we are not completely sure what time it is, since Arizona doesn’t recognize the same time zones) on the way to the Grand Canyon north rim, for our final round of camping.  The first round went really well, and we’re feeling pretty good about the camping at the Grand Canyon, as long as it doesn’t rain. We’ll let you know how it goes.