We're Marching to Zion!

We left Kanarraville, Utah, and headed to our campground reservations in Hurricane.  Months ago when we decided we wanted to visit Zion National Park, we started looking for a campground in the area.  We had hoped to stay inside the national park at Watchman campground, but learned our lesson that those spots are booked months in advance.  We have also found that the campgrounds in the small towns closest to the national parks charge about double of what a comparable space should be.  So we found a very nice campground 25 miles away in Hurricane, Utah.  Even 25 miles away, and even traveling after Labor Day, and even getting the reduced weekly rate, this is the most expensive campground of the last 8 months.  But we are happy to be here with the luxury of spending a full week in a beautiful area!

As soon as we got the motor home settled into Willow Wind Campground in Hurricane, we headed to Zion National Park for a reconnaissance mission to check out the lay of the land.  Arriving in the afternoon, we knew that all the parking places inside the park would be full.  So we parked on the edge of Springdale, Utah, and waited for the next shuttle bus to drive us the last few miles into the park.  The scenery in Springdale is obviously very scenic before we even got into Zion.

Once in the park, we sprung off our Springdale shuttle, and got on the national park shuttle at the visitor's center.  We would immediately see some of the beautiful peaks that Zion is famous for. This is the view from the first shuttle stop at the Natural History Museum.


We wanted a short hike this afternoon, and the Upper and Lower Emerald Pools trail was recommended.  It's relatively flat, short and easy.  That means that it is the recommended hike for the majority of visitors.  It's been a long time since we have been on a trail that was so congested that our main view was the back of the person in front of us.  It was hard to pass slow groups because a constant stream of visitors were coming from the opposite direction.

The highlight of the trail is the Emerald Falls, but it was impossible to get a picture with the crowds gathered there.  This was our picture from afar, with Denisa in the bottom right corner.  The other people in the picture are some of the 41,000 tourists visiting the national park with us that day.  We're pretty sure that 40,000 of them were on the Emerald Pools trail in the afternoon.

We did take the longer and more difficult loop trail back to the shuttle stop, and the crowds dwindled as the trail got harder.  Most people were having a hard time with the incline up to the upper pools.  This wasn't a problem for us, as we were hiking at 11,000 feet of elevation yesterday.  Zion is around 4,000 feet, and so it feels like we are walking in an oxygen chamber today.  This is one of the views from the end of the trail, of a peak that is probably a mile away from our camera.



It is almost impossible to capture the glorious size of these peaks all around us.  So in the following picture Mark has circled one of the shuttle buses closer to the mountain.  These are buses with another trailer behind, and they hold around 80 passengers.  This is a big bus, but beside the mountain it is so tiny that we had to circle it in red just to be seen.

We stayed in the park until evening, and we have a plan now for our visit.  It will include getting to the park very early before the crowds and high temperatures, and we will be hiking the most difficult trails.  We're looking forward to those hikes in the week to come!