Zion
After we left the Grand Canyon we headed to a part of the trip that to be honest we weren’t sure what to expect. With no more hotel reservations we want to see where this takes us. We have 3 national parks we want to see and the first of those was Zion.
We arrived around 5pm and were thinking that we might be able to spend 2–3 hours checking out the main sites. As we drove in, it seemed like the chatter in the car changed to just staring out the window at the beauty. There’s an incredible mix of red rocks along with trees, grass, and greenery. Normally the red rocks comes with desert-like surroundings and not much greenery, so this was a striking difference.
We stopped right away at the visitors center and asked what to do while we were there. It turns out that to get into the main parts of Zion, there is a free bus system that you have to take. There is one road that is 10–15 miles that goes up into the park and back. Each bus stop has different hikes and views that you can check out. You can also walk or ride your bike instead of taking the bus.
We quickly realized that we wouldn’t be able to see the sights as the buses were winding down for the day. It was time to think about finding a place to stay and then we could decide what we wanted to do before bed. I asked at the visitors center about where to stay and they told me to head to the nearest town. In the morning I had looked around just to know the hotel landscape and there was a place called Zion National Park Lodge. When I asked the park ranger about it she said that wouldn’t work because you need a reservation a year in advance. Of course that was all I needed to hear and I immediately brought up my phone and saw they had a room available!
Here’s the cool thing. That hotel is in the part of the park that you have to take the bus to. When you have a reservation there, they give you the code to the gate so you can drive in. And that’s exactly what we did. We felt like we’d won the lottery. We drove up to this incredible lodge in awe. There was hardly anyone there and we had a cabin to stay in right under some magnificent (and enormous) red rocks.
The main lodge of the hotel has a round patch of grass in front about the size of a football field. There
Our cabin was beautiful with a fireplace.
We stayed in a cabin at the foot of a giant wall of rock. The cabin felt like the perfect place. It only had one bed so I slept on the floor. One striking thing about the Lodge is the wildlife… especially the deer. You could practically pet the deer as they hung out on the grass on the front lawn. We played a card game on the lawn that evening as the deer were hanging out around us.
The Narrows
In the morning we got up early and hopped the 1st bus to a place called The Narrows. A stream cuts through these rocks to create a narrow gorge with steep rock that goes straight up. After a short hike, we jumped right into the ‘trail’. The trail is actually the stream. You need water shoes because you walk right in the water. It was so much fun! Sometimes you walked on rocks or sand and sometimes we would wade in waist deep water. The fun part was that each step brought a little unknown that we had to figure out. This fun combined with the incredible beauty of this outdoor playground made it a level 10 experience. It was a sense of adventure that we always look for!
The smiles on the girls faces tell how much fun we really had. The pictures and video give an idea of what it was like.
We had no expectations of Zion, we thought we might be able to see it in a few hours in the evening. Instead… it instantly became one of our favorite places.
