Megan’s Take
We had Zion National Park on the agenda for today. We managed to get up and out before 7 am this morning so that we could get a parking spot at the visitor center. The alternative is to park in the town of Springdale and take a town shuttle into the park, but we did not want to add more logistics with kids.
Once we were inside the park, we took shuttles around, which our kids were excited about.
We hiked the 2 mile Riverside walk, stopping at the Narrows where people walk in the river (very low right now) up through the canyon.
We were not planning to attempt that with our kids who frequently trip and fall on dry land. If we come back, the Narrows hike would probably be on our bucket list.
After that, the morning passed quickly with shuttle rides, a visit to the Zion history museum, and lunch. We took a scenic drive out through the Mt. Carmel tunnel while Emmett napped and were amazed at the scenery on the other side.
It was a very different (and equally as beautiful) view of the national park with unique geological features.
When we were ready to leave the park, we took a detour to the top of a mesa for a rock hounding adventure. We mostly stayed near the dirt/gravel parking lot of a trailhead, because I was concerned about the kids wandering into cacti or snakes. But it was fun to look around and have solitude from crowds.
Phil’s Take
The Riverside trail was great, but crowded. I can’t imagine how bad it gets at the peak, which it obviously was not for us this morning. You can see how many there were at the spot where everyone continuing on crossed the river above. It wasn’t so crowded a little downstream, so I caught this 360 degree panorama of the river and cliffs.
After the hike, we stopped at Big Bend, which doesn’t really have any hikes or anything, but the views are awesome. At least that’s what the bus driver said that convinced us to get off there. He wasn’t wrong.
The panorama didn’t do it justice and neither did this shot with lens flair, but hopefully your imagination can clean it up better than the AI editing stuff in this tablet.
The view behind the museum was awesome, and the kids really wanted to see the film.
Our drive up to the tunnel was beautiful, no doubt. There was a lot of cars parked in the pull outs, so we didn’t get as many pictures going up, but they were generally good. Of course barely doing the real thing any justice.
As Megan noted it was the other side of the tunnel that offered something different. I immediately noticed as soon as we excited the tunnel how different the rock was. It was like it was from an oil painting, where you could see the brush strokes going in all different directions. Normally when you see exposed rock like that, it has a pretty consistent grain, which is why this stuff stuck out to me so much.
We drove up to Checkerboard Mesa, which is even more different from everything else, with the namesake pattern on it.
However, there were other areas where you could see the rock sliced vertically much more pronounced.
All in all, I think this part of the drive was the most interesting due to the uniqueness of the rock and the huge variety of landscape.
Megan forgot to mention that the kids got to see Yogi Bear, which they were very excited about even though they have no idea who he is.
They don’t make cartoons like they used to.
As always, here’s a gallery of everything.
Love the enthusiasm for Yogi Bear, maybe you could show them an old episode to hype them up.
The photos are gorgeous!