Unbelievably clear skies last night as we settled in to a FINALLY cooled down airstream, and we were able to get a couple pics of the canyons surround us.
Great campground, but holy guacamole, is it sunny and hot! Thankfully, we had a nice big fat tree over our site, and we backed that Airstream as close as we could to that tree, nestling the butt of our camper right up to the trunk, and wow has that made a difference! Much more pleasant during the heat of the day.
Ben had a 5 am board call and was able to get another pic of the deep blue, pre-dawn sky. Stars still out!
Since Ben rudely interrupted my sleep and I was up anyway, we decided to get in an early morning hike and see some areas of the park we never made it to, on our last visit. It was already toasty pretty early in the morning, so this was the only way to beat the horrible afternoon heat.
We ended up finding a little trail head, thanks to social media (begrudgingly and surprisingly!), on the far end of the road that climbs and twists back on itself many times on the way through from one entrance of the park to the other. Just the drive is worth the visit to the park. You wouldn’t have to do a single hike, you could just drive this road and pull over at the little pullouts along the way to look around, and just explore the park that way and still be overwhelmed.
We popped through the very narrow, very dark 1.1 mile long tunnel at the far end of the park and had to drive a bit down the road to find a parking spot that we could squeeze our oversized truck into. With the sun beating down on us already, we suited up, and started hiking back towards the beginning of the trail. As we approached the trail head, we noted a VERY IMPORTANT structure, available to incident-prone hikers. And it was modern! Well, modern in the sense that it was slightly bigger than a porta toilet but it still didn’t flush. lol
Speaking of incidents. I know we got off to a rough start with the, ahem, trail one of us left through a string of national parks stretching from Colorado through Wyoming and Montana, and back through Idaho and now Utah, but this Zion Canyon area takes me to another level of “concern.”
Up in Tetons, Yellowstone and Glacier, they had green things growing out of the ground in various shapes, sizes, and densities. Trees, bushes, brushes, weeds, wild flowers and grasses. Lots of places to hide behind, in the event of “incidents.” Here, NOTHING. You’re either jammed in to a fairly tight canyon to do your business, or you’re pretty much completely exposed. Unless you’re wearing all tan or brown, you’re gonna be visible. FOR MILES.
Even if you think you’re “hiding,” in this particular national park, it’s guaranteed that there’s someone there. High visibility and a ton of people are both terrible for my emergency bathroom options. If we ever return to Zion for a third time, I definitely need a military style, tan, camo net that I can squat under and a bigger backpack to fit it in. ✅
Just as a side note, there is no such thing as a “silent fart” in a canyon. Can someone tell my husband that? His excuses for why he keeps trying to get away with it, just don’t fly with me. 🙄 How he make those kinds of noises ALLLLL day and doesn’t have an emergency, is beyond me.
So anyway… we hit the trailhead at Canyon Overlook Trail, and immediately started climbing up in to the canyon, away from the little road behind us. This whole canyon is just red and grey rock in various stages of breaking down from mountain to boulders to rock to pebbles to dirt to dust. All piled up on top of each other. It’s lumpy and dusty and there are awesome places where, long ago, relentlessly flowing water just carved big swoops in to the solid rock, or where bigger boulders piled up, all shaded (mostly) by steep, narrow canyon walls above.
We had a couple of scary height spots, but a pretty neat hike. We were both thinking, Hmmm, I thought it would be busier here. Turns out it was, just not where we were. More on that in a moment.
It was a fun hike! A mild, near incident averted by the pre-reserved bathroom, and we decided to go back, pack a lunch, and head in to the park via the shuttle just to have a picnic by the Virgin River and plan the next day’s adventure.
The road in to the park itself is closed to cars, so you need to take a little shuttle in to the park, or since we are really close to the park entrance at this campground, you just walk a half mile. Then, you take the shuttle that only operates inside the park, and you get off at one of 9 stops, from which you can check out the local trail heads and overlooks. Decent system. Designed to move tons and tons of people through the park.
Full of excitement and hope, we set off for the shuttle. We loaded on to the shuttle and found our place to stand, where we could hang on easily. It was like being in China because the people kept coming on and kept coming on and kept coming on until finally we were, as Ben said, “nuts to butts.” A bulging shuttle, packed with a Walmarts worth of people trundled up the hillside toward the bus only area of the park. Our operator was bright and cheerful, as she described what was going on around us and what to expect as we rode our way into the canyon. If you look to the left of the bus, you’ll see where rockslides have taken out the road several times. We both turned to our left to look at what she was describing and our only view was the hairy armpits of people standing next to us, who were also holding onto the railing above. When the tour operators said blah blah blah is on the right, we decided not to take our chances, and just stayed staring ahead.
We made it to the last stop and the top of the park. The last comment from our cheerful driver was that it was unsafe to go in or near the Virgin River water, as there was an outbreak of some kind of algae or flesh eating bacteria (not sure which she said 🤔). That little announcement made us decide to just forego the river side picnic and just have the picnic right there at shuttle stop 9.
I MUST comment that the beautiful modern bathrooms at Stop 9 were mysteriously closed and a parking lot full of porta toilets had been substituted for the beautiful modern bathrooms. Hmmm. I can’t help myself and I never miss a chance to “go,” but these were GROSS. Every door I opened had a potty full to the TOP and not a stitch of TP. I didn’t have to go that badly. Pass! Moving on.
Gluten free sandwiches with BBQ chips in front of my fav closed bathroom.
Even as blazing hot as it was, we decided to hike down to the start of the famous Narrows. We had no intention of going through the narrows today. Just hiking up to them. Hiking the Narrows requires that you basically walk in the river (which according to our bus driver, was apparently tainted at the moment), going from ankle deep to some places waist and chest deep. Depends on the season. Looked like a wet day from the folks that were coming out with their shirts half wet.
It was a neat hike for the most part. Beautiful canyons on both sides of us, neat river running through the middle, and THOUSANDS of people doing the same thing we were. It wasn’t long before we felt like we were in a line at Disney and we weren’t enjoying the scenery as much. We took a deep breath, stepped off the path for a while to let the crowd ebb through, and we turned back around towards Stop 9. It was still beautiful, but we were just peopled out.
We loaded back on to the shuttle in the same manner as before, this time saying, let’s sit so we can see the sites that they were talking about on the way up! Almost as soon as we said that and sat down, then the bus, once again, filled up to capacity, and now, instead of armpits, we had a couple of foreign traveler butts to keep us involuntarily occupied for the duration of the trip. Speaking of that, the driver cheerfully announced that we would be making every stop on the way down the mountain to pick up more travelers, so pack in! Uggh, many butts later, we pooped, err, popped off the bus, beelined for the camper for a well deserved “stay away from people” break.
Tomorrow is e-bike day! We went hunting in the tourist trap stores and found a pair of expensive padded bloomers for me to try out and hopefully, this time, it will be a better ride!
TaterTotTales 