Day 6: Zion National Park

Day 1: Travel
Day 2: Hoover Dam Half Marathon
Day 3: Best Friends: tour/orientation/dogs
Day 4: Best Friends: cats
Day 5: Bryce Canyon National Park


Next up, Zion National Park. First impressions...gorgeous (obviously) and amazing how different it looked compared to Bryce! They've been doing a lot of road construction in Zion so we got a little bit delayed heading into the park, but nothing major. The two hikes I had my eye on were Angel's Landing and The Narrows. I knew we wouldn't do much of the Narrows, but I wanted to at least do a little bit of it. Since it would involve wading in the water, we started with Angel's Landing.

Shortly into this, we knew we were going to actually get some exercise in this day! Up, up and up we continued to climb. I had every intention of the doing the full hike to Angel's Landing. It's a 2.5 mile hike to the top. At two miles in, you reach Scout's Landing. From there, you can continue to go up to the summit but it's a narrow ridge with chains bolted to the rocks to help you hold on. I have a mild fear of heights when I'm near edges of tall drop-offs, etc. Just a few steps into this section and I started wondering how in the world I was going to get back down. I thought I could get up, worried about getting down. Then, there was also the thought back to the previous day where I slipped on some rocks and fell flat on my face. If I did that here, well, I'd fall off the side of a cliff. So, I chickened out! :-(

( We hiked all the way back down and headed up to the next location. After a break for lunch, we hit Weeping Rock Trail and then decided to try Hidden Canyon Trail. After hiking up, up, up we hit more chains...damn! OK, first set of chains weren't bad, keep going. More chains...argh. Went a little ways and started to feel a little funny in the legs and I decided I was chickening out again! Back down we went. I'm not sure how much farther that trail went up but I think we were nearing the end when I chickened out.

Next up, hit the Riverside Walk to head towards the Narrows. The Narrows is a 'trail', but it's really just the river. You can hike in several miles and need a special permit to do the whole thing. I didn't plan on going very far but at least wanted to experience a little bit of it. Raring to go, I hiked up my pants, made sure my shoes were tied and started wading in the water. It was cold and the rocks were so slippery. The current of the river was a little stronger than I expected as well. We zig-zagged from side to side for a little while but I was so slow trying not to fall in between the current and the slippery rocks. It seemed like we were already knee deep and weren't very far in at all. At this point, we pretty much concluded we weren't going to go too much further because it was starting to get late in the afternoon and we weren't really equipped to go too far. The smart people apparently rent suits that protect you from the cold...oh, ok...that makes sense. One guy who passed us was waist deep in the water because he was heading straight down instead of zig-zagging from side to side like we were to avoid the really deep water.

On the way back, despite walking very very slowly on top of wet, slippery rocks, I finally took my tumble into the water. Somehow I saved the precious camera with my 1,000 pictures on it and it didn't plunge into the water like the rest of me! I should've prepared much better like packing something to protect the camera from the water! But, I didn't, I was just enjoying the moment. At least it made it memorable.

Knowing we'd get wet, we saved this little adventure for the last of the day. We eventually made it back to the car, changed out wet socks and shoes (and pants and everything else for me!) and headed back to Kanab. Exciting, tiring day. Overall conclusions - very glad we went to both Bryce and Zion. Bryce had spectacular scenary. Zion did as well, but not quite as unique, but the hiking was more exciting at Zion!

Hikes completed:
Angels Landing
Weeping Rock Trail
Hidden Canyon Trail
Riverside Walk plus a small portion of the Narrows

Next Up: Last day at Best Friends