We are only 50 miles away from Zion National Park and we get there in no time through the small towns of La Verkin and Springdale. The latter is mostly geared to the tourism industry and also runs a shuttle bus to the park. Restaurants, cafés and shops line the main street through it. You cannot visit Zion with your own car, but you must park at the Visitor Center and board the propane-fueled shuttle buses that circle every 3 minutes and drop you off at all the major points of interests. I actually find this to be a great idea, and wonder why many other parks don't adopt the same strategy. Being a Wednesday and at the end of October, the park is very crowded. Please please please, don't even think to come close to it during the summer! Since we will be exiting the park from the east entrance, we need to buy a special $15 pass for oversized vehicles to go through the tunnel, currently under repair. However, getting rid of the RV for the day is a blessing! Our first welcome sign into the park is a sudden thunderstorm, after which the day gets brighter and sunnier by the minute.
Adopting the same strategy as in Bryce, we ride the shuttle to the very end of the 6-mile loop, and start working our way back. We immediately hit a trail that winds along the Virgin river, and brings you to the start of the Narrows hike, a 17-mile one-way into one of the darkest and steepest canyons imaginable, with vertical walls raising left and right 2000ft above ground. It's like the Black Canyon of the Gunnison but in reverse, this time we are at the bottom and we are looking up. You look up, and you'd think that you are surrounded by New York skyscrapers, except that these massive walls are Navajo sandstone, not glass and steel. The Virgin river looks harmless and murky. We learn from the Steve the shuttle driver that it took the river 17 million years to carve the canyon, and that each year it carries downstream about 1 million cubic feet of sand. Truly, the rocks around are huge and overpowering. We decide to walk the 6 miles back to the Visitor Center and stop at other points to see whether we have time to hike or not. At Wheeping Rock, we climb to an overhang with water dripping from above... Very romantic. Further down, at Zion Lodge, we hit the trail to the Emerald Pools. We start with the upper, then the middle and lastly the lower. It's a steep climb, but well worth the 2.5 hours. Once we reach the lodge again, we hop on the shuttle back to the parking lot. We are driving out of Zion through the tunnel and checkerboard mesa. We cross the town of Kanab, dubbed "Utah's little Hollywood" - and I can see why: this is where all the John Wayne's western movies were filmed. The town itself is not worth a stop, but the hills around it are worth a second look. We are leaving Utah and entering Arizona tonight.
On our way to Zion, Kolob canyon is right behind this mountain, on unpaved terrain.
Approaching Zion, together with the clouds.
In the town of Springdale, Petr stopped to take pictures of farm animals. An elk...
and a cute donkey!
Welcome to Zion National Park!
Towering rocks of sandstone.
At the end of our walk along the Virgin river, the entrance to the Narrows.
The trail is somewhere in there, we just cannot see where it goes through the rocks.
This is the view to the back of us, we came from there.
And here is the Virgin river. Doesn't it really look harmless?
Laura tried to cross it but got stuck in the middle with nowhere to go.
The walls at Big Bend.
Along our walk in the canyon.
Panorama.
Another panoramic view.
Wheeping Rock. You can walk right below it.
Distant view from Wheeping Rock.
The amphitheater at Big Bend.
The Shrine of the Patriarchs.
A view as we climb to the Upper Emerald Pool.
On the trail.
This vertical wall is 300ft above us and drops water in the Upper Emerald Pool.
Last panorama before we go back to the parking lot.
Driving towards the tunnel, the right side of the park.
The entrance to the 1.1-mile tunnel.
The view after we exit.
Gradient colors from white to vermilion.
This is Checkerboard Mesa.