TRAVEL

Finding Refuge — Zion National Park

Stunning National Park in Utah

View from the “top” of our climb up the mountain, our first glimpse of Zion’s canyon. Photo by author

Twelve thousand years ago, Utah’s Zion Canyon was home to ground sloths, mammoths, and camels as Indigenous Americans hunted the canyon and called it home. More than 7,000 years ago, the big game was replaced with mule deer and big horn sheep, and the indigenous people farmed the rich area supplied with water from the Virgin River.

In 1909, President Taft set aside this pristine wild area as protected land, and it was named Zion National Park in 1919. The name comes from the Hebrew word meaning “refuge," it certainly is a refuge. By protecting this canyon, Taft hoped “to preserve its many natural features of unusual archaeologic, geologic, and geographic interest.”

We visited this amazing park on our National Parks tour a few years ago. We drove Zion Mt. Carmel Highway through the tunnel and arrived at the stunning canyon. Before I knew it, we stopped at a rest stop, which ended up being a two-hour climb up and down the mountain to see the above view. If you look at the top photo (center left), you can see the road below.

It was a great opportunity to see Zion from above and make a few friends along the way. We had a close encounter with a herd of Desert Big Horn Sheep who didn’t mind us invading their high-altitude…