Zion is an incredible National Park and one that we’ve now gone back to three times, because we love it so much. Zion is definitely one we wanted to share with our kids for their first big National Park/camping experience.
Due to cars not being allowed into the park, it makes for a serene, breathtaking bike path that leads to every single trailhead. You just have to watch for the occasional shuttle bus and make sure you pull over to let them pass. As we found out on our first visit to the park, the shuttle system is nice, but overcrowded and loaded with stinky people who’ve been out exploring all day, which is why we prefer the bike riding method.
Zion is well known for a couple of intense hikes and they’re both pretty popular. Angels Landing and the Narrows.
Angels Landing is a legendary 5.4 mile round trip hike which climbs 1,488 feet in elevation, up the grueling “Walter’s Wiggles” switchbacks to Scout Lookout. From there, it follows a dizzying, razor-thin sandstone ridge with sheer drop-offs of over 1,000 feet, utilizing bolted chains for support.
It has never even crossed our minds to climb this one. The switchbacks, sure, maybe, but the 1,000 foot drops on a narrow ledge? Nope. Pass. NFW. Not gonna happen. We are OUT. Some of us are specifically OUT because there’s no restroom anywhere around where you have to hang on to chains for dear life. Some of us don’t want our last picture on this earth to be one with poopy pants.
The Narrows is a, you guessed it, very narrow hike in the Virgin River in a slot canyon, with towering sandstone, 1,000 ft walls on both sides. This is more our speed, but we’re still praying we can keep up with the kids without wheezing too much. We’re truly Florida flat-landers now and not conditioned for elevations above five feet.
More on that hike later.
Both signature hikes are very popular and very busy, but Angels Landing requires a special permit to limit the number of people that attempt to climb each day.
We thankfully secured a permit for the first full day that the kids were here, so first order on the agenda for the first full day in Zion is hiking Angels Landing!
Them, not us.
Chris was hopeful that mom and dad would join them on the hike, so he requested a permit for five people, but when we politely declined, he told the checker of permits stationed at Scout Lookout that we pussed out. We’re completely okay with that reputation when it concerns Angels Landing.
We also had rented bikes for the kids for the two full days we were going to be in Zion. As we have said before, E-bikes are the only way to go! In fact, that was the main reason we bought some after last year’s trip. And we brought them with us, strapped to the back of the airstream. In fact, that may well be a big part of the weight problem. Hmmmm…
After a leisurely and wonderful breakfast, we all set off on our bikes, headed for the base camp for the kids’ hike. We had an absolutely beautiful ride into the canyon, and we wished the kids luck for their big hike! Nope, we are still not going along.
We took that very important “last known location” pic with the kids, pointed the way to the death path (we mean Angels Landing path) and then we cruised back down the valley and back to the camper so we could chill out and catch up on some blogging!
Along the way, we goofed off quite a bit and we even stopped and spent some time looking for gold nuggets in the Virgin River. There must be some here right? Need to find at least an ounce or two to pay for the fuel on this trip…
Six hours later(!!!) the kids came cruising back into camp and they had had a blast! Extremely strenuous hike and very scary heights traversing up the chains section. They got some great pics up at the top!
While they were gone, we made dinner which they wolfed down as soon as they arrived back.
We only had a little bit of downtime that day, before we hopped in the truck and drove back to Hurricane UT for our night time ATV tour. It was advertised as a dark sky starlight tour, and we did see some stars come out before we had to head back in, but the sunset is just too late this time of year for it to be fully dark, so we didn’t get to see a milky way night kind of starry night.
But…
It was still an absolute blast! We had two super duper side by side Polaris RZR’s with the full helmet and four point harnesses and we all got a chance to follow an experienced guide through the sand dunes close to Zion.
We spent about two hours ripping through the desert, watching out for cows that did not seem bewildered by these machines AT ALL. Just a normal day to them.
And we soon found out why.
After dark kicked in at around 9:30 pm, we started hearing the real machines coming out to play.
High revving engines echoed through the dunes. Flashes of blindingly bright lights splashed off the rock formations and dunes as powerful machines could be heard growling and careening through the high desert terrain everywhere around us.
Suddenly, four fast moving machines crested the horizon.
They came careening over the top of the closest dune with sand spinning off in circular plumes and spraying in all directions from furiously spinning wheels. The headlights, or rather, all of the lights, blazing against the darkening sky, threatening to set the whole valley alight with their brilliance. Each of the machines was blaring ground shaking music that could barely compete with the screaming engines as the massive suspensions kept all four wheels firmly planted on top of the shifting sand as they slid around the top of the dune
At the back of each machine were proudly mounted two incredibly long and lit up tail whips and an array of American or Military flags.
The first one came to a sliding stop at a 40 degree angle not too far from our little group of what I now knew were basically children’s toys. The music cut out for a moment, and a man’s voice shouted “You guys good?”
We said “yep!”
The dude shouted “Right on!” and the music fired back up, the accelerator hit the floor, and the ATV shot off like a rocket with his buddies not far behind.
It was pretty cool.
We headed back to Zion after an extremely long and exciting day, where we called it a night and hit the sack!
Tomorrow is the Narrows!
TaterTotTales 