Kolob Canyon

We have been looking forward to visiting Zion National Park, and we discovered that a section of that park is just 7 miles down the road from where we are staying in Kanarraville.  Kolob Canyon is a separated section of Zion that is northwest of the larger national park.  It doesn't get the number of visitors that our national parks usually see, and that was fine with us. We knew it would be something special when we drove over the first big hill and saw these huge red  mountains in front of us.  It's hard to grasp how big these mountains are, but those tiny tufts of green are not grass--they are 50-foot trees.  We hiked to the end of the view point trail, and traded picture-taking with a new friend on the trail.

We're about a mile away from those beautiful red rock walls on this hike, and that's the only reason they can fit into one camera frame.

The weather was so beautiful with blue skies and highs in the 70's, so we decided to do another hike while we were visiting this park.  This trail was longer, and led us down between two of those red canyon walls along Taylor Creek.  Mark just happened to wear a shirt today that matched the canyons.

The sun was shining just below the back side of one of the canyon tops.

We found some more rocks that matched Mark's outfit today.  For some reason, Denisa was a lot more excited about this than Mark was.

The scaly picture for today was a lizard sunning on a rock.  He was doing push-ups, showing off his blue belly.

The picture below is another of those beautiful red rock walls right above Taylor Creek.  We came to find out that the reason this is called Taylor Creek Trail is because it would continuously cross that creek for the next two miles.   We started counting after the first several crossings, and our count would go all the way to 52 before we got to our destination.

Our destination for today was the double arch alcove.  Denisa is dwarfed in the bottom of the following photo, by the huge arch overhead.  The red navajo sandstone is so porous that water seeps through it--turning the rock to a nice mossy green color.

Normal people would return the same way they came--completing this 5-mile hike in good time.  But one of the hikers we had met earlier had mentioned that most people stop too soon because you can continue until the canyon walls come together.  So Mark decided that following the now dry Taylor Creek bed to the end of the canyon would be an adventure.  Here is Denisa, standing behind piles of debris that we had to climb over to continue down the creek.

It was pretty as the canyon narrowed, but it was slow hiking without a trail and with lots of debris, sand, and loose pebbles.

The sun was lower in the sky, and Denisa just had to take another picture when the sun was turning the cliffs into bright neon orange walls.

We stumbled our way through thickets and under fallen trees and over tall boulders.  We climbed up and over a big wall.  Denisa took this picture of Mark far below in the creek bed.

That's when Mark looked and saw the point where the canyon walls came together.  He realized that we had actually climbed over and missed the end of the canyon point that the other hiker had told us about.  So we had hiked a couple miles out of our way, but we did finally get to our second destination after all.

If it hadn't been for that laborious extra hike, we wouldn't have gotten to see the double arch with the setting sun lighting it up from the side.  We had completely missed the upper arch the first time.  It suddenly made a lot more sense why this area is called the double arch alcove.

On the trip back to the car, we knew we would have to make those 52 creek crossings again.  Denisa had counted them on the first route, but that took too much concentration.  So before we started the return trip, she gathered 52 stones.

Then every time we crossed the creek bed, she dropped one of her stones.  Her bag of rocks became a distance-o-meter for the trip back.  With that extra detour down the creek bed, this little hike had turned into an 8.5-mile strenous hike, and that was in addition to the earlier one-mile hike today.  We were getting tired.  But as the bag got lighter, the end of this long hike got closer.  Denisa sometimes gets bored with these out-and-back hikes that cover the same trail twice.  She has to play games like throwing stones into creeks to entertain herself.

She was a little concerned when she ran out of rocks, and we still had three creek crossings before we got to the car.  Mark was also concerned, thinking he was going to have to carry her the rest of the way because she was counting on resting in the car when she ran out of rocks.  Either she miscounted on the first trip down the trail, or she miscounted the rocks in the bag.  Either way, her accuracy with numbers has certainly gone downhill since she retired!