Today we explored Zion National Park…
Yes, more rocks… But different rocks, and different colored rocks…
Zion National Park is an national park located in Southwestern Utah near the city of Springdale. A prominent feature of the 229-square-mile park is Zion Canyon, which stretches 15 miles long and spans up to half a mile deep. It cuts through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River. The lowest point in the park is 3,666 ft at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft at Horse Ranch Mountain. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity.
Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches. Human habitation of the area started about 8,000 years ago with small family groups of Native Americans; however, these Indians moved away by 1300 and were replaced by other Southern Paiute subtribes. Mormons came into the area in 1858 and settled there in the early 1860s. In 1909, President William Howard Taft named the area Mukuntuweap National Monument in order to protect the canyon. In 1918, the acting director of the newly created National Park Service, Horace Albright, drafted a proposal to enlarge the existing monument and change the park’s name to Zion National Monument, a name used by the Mormons. According to historian Hal Rothman: “The name change played to a prevalent bias of the time. Many believed that Spanish and Indian names would deter visitors who, if they could not pronounce the name of a place, might not bother to visit it. The new name, Zion, had greater appeal to an ethnocentric audience.” On November 20, 1919, the United States Congress established the monument as Zion National Park, and it was signed by President Woodrow Wilson. The Kolob section was proclaimed a separate Zion National Monument in 1937, but was incorporated into the park in 1956.
We left the RV park at just before 6:00 am, Utah time… Wow! It is really dark out here!
Light finally came just as we arrived at Zion, just after 7:00 am.
The entrance station was still closed. We entered the tunnel (1.1 mile long, took 3 years to complete in the 1930s…) and emerged to the sun rising over the valley below…
Maybe I should have cleaned my windshield…
As we drove through the almost deserted park we recalled that we had been told that Zion is the 3rd most visited national park in the USA, yet it is one of the smaller parks. We were arriving early precisely to avoid these expected crowds.
As we drove to the visitor center we found many interesting sights as the rising sun began to hit the higher peaks…
We arrived at the visitors center (which was not yet open) and parked. We then walked the Pa’rus Trail, along the Virgin River for about 1 1/2 miles…
Lynda went off-road to get a picture of the rapids…
The sun continued to reveal move sights…
We arrived at Canyon Junction, where we caught the shuttle to the Lodge…
We had a nice late breakfast in the second floor dining room, then set out to walk the Lower Emerald Pool Trail… Only one mile, round trip…
Finally we arrived at the “waterfall”… More of a “wet wall”…
The pool was a little bit emerald…
Now we see falling water…
Falling into the Emerald Pool…
We back-tracked to the lodge and caught the shuttle to Temple of Sinawava… They tried to explain which rocks looked like a temple, but I didn’t see it…
We are following the Virgin River, once again, about two miles round trip. At the top of the canyon is “The Narrows”. In the mean time, we see the flora and fauna…
If you squint, and imagine it 100 times as big, it almost looks like a bear… Lynda says she wants to see a bear…
Finally we reach the end of the trail. No, this is not a throng of Mormons being baptized… This is where “The Narrows” begins. To see the narrows up close, where the canyon walls are only 20′ apart, you need to hike upstream through the water for about a mile… We didn’t…
We were not about to walk in the river, so we returned along the path, seeing the canyon from the other direction…
At the trail head we caught the shuttle back to the visitors center, and thus to the Big Red Truck. As we headed out of the park we saw the sights that we missed by arriving when it was still dark…
We emerged from the tunnel… and we were on our way…
We returned to Kanab, where we enjoyed a late lunch at the Wild Thyme Cafe. We returned to The Villa, where the AC was running strong (it is 93 degrees today…), took a nap, and had Happy Hours…
And an enjoyable time was had by all…
About 4 miles in we turned off into Castle Valley, a semi-residential area. This valley is unlike anything we have seen in Utah. All green – even the rock-faced mountains…
Adventures in the Villa 