Hiking Zion…

Soon, so soon, I will have to get back into the standard routine of up early, write early, think early, eat early. I am not an early person. I can do it if I have to…trust me, on this trip, there were times we had to be up early to hike before heat or beat the crowds, and I did it, but sleep sometimes is so hard to get that it almost hurts. This morning, I am so tired, and it’s not even that early…tomorrow it will be two hours earlier, and my body is already protesting. Part of that is staying up too late, of course. Whoops. My bad. Good reasons though.

But I do have a meeting today and will have to leave soon (hence the not sleeping in until I really want to wake up, although really, the cats were already like, BIATCH WHY YOU NO FEED ME, so there was no hope).

I went through the 3000 pictures I took on the trip (I don’t really know how many there were) and pulled some I thought were especially good. I posted a brief run-through of the trip a few days ago after the most amazing shower in the world (not the shower itself, the physical stall in a bathtub…it wasn’t that awesome…it was just an amazing shower because I was so dirty by the time I got to it). Here’s the first two days, extended dance mix.

We left early in the morning, drove through Riverside and Las Vegas, and killed an inordinate amount of butterflies, it was truly disturbing.

I feel to atone I will need to plant my yard with whatever plants they eat and then get a bunch of caterpillars and let them feed off my yard. Because it was horrific.

On the way to Vegas, we stopped at Seven Magic Mountains…not because it’s totally amazing…but because it was weird…

It was also virtually impossible to avoid all the selfie people and people in general in this photo…

Definitely an interesting start to a trip that was all about rocks.

We drove all day, pretty much, checked into our bunkhouse, and then drove into Zion to check it out, hopefully get a map, and figure out what we were going to do the next day. It did actually bring a tear to my poor little eye, driving into the park and seeing those towering rocks. We did a short hike to make up for being in the car for hours…

and checked out the view…

From a little further back even…

Yeah. That.

And on the way back to the car, saw our first of many mule deer…

Oh hai! Sorry. Go back to eating that bush. Tree. Whatever it is.

We talked to the ranger at the entrance, and he said to make it into the visitors’ center parking lot, we needed to be there before 8. OK. We can do that.

This is, of course, how we end up making sausage and eggs on a barbecue outside at 6 in the morning. Ugh.

The different lights of Zion…

We didn’t camp in the park because apparently the tent caterpillars are awful this time of year. We did see lots of caterpillars. We’re hoping they all survived, to make up for the deaths we perpetrated on the way out there, even though it’s not the same butterfly dammit.

So the night before, we decided we would hike the Angel’s Landing trail until just before the crazy part, the single-file part. We decided to do it first, because it’s the hardest thing we wanted to do. We were on the trail early, around 8 AM, with this deer…

There were others. The hike starts in the bottom of the canyon, and then it climbs.

It climbs about 1000 feet to Scout Lookout, and then another 500 feet for the Angel’s Landing part. It’s also a higher elevation than we’re used to, so we took it as slow as we had to. Basically, that’s how we did every hike this trip. At the appropriate speed for us.

A view of the valley…you can see some of the trail we’re climbing on the bottom right.

Part of the trail that climbs up…this is the easier part.

Much easier in shade too…the full heat of a summer’s day? I wouldn’t be able to hike this…looking down at what we’ve climbed up…

There were quite a few people on this trail.

The valley again…see the trail to the left of those people? Yes, we started down there.

Beautiful views as the sun starts to come into the valley. And we’re still smiling…

At this point, we’re on the 21 switchbacks that make up Walter’s Wiggles…looking down, you can see a bunch of the switchbacks.

It was slow going, but we went.

And finally at the top…

Well, at Scout Lookout, which is where we stopped. The Virgin River where we started…

The rock face in front of us…

And the crazy people who aren’t scared of heights and don’t mind waiting forever for a space to keep moving.

I’m sure it’s cool. I just wasn’t gonna do it. I am afraid of heights. So there.

The sun peaking over the rock walls…

Then we explored the rest of the park until we couldn’t handle badly behaved tourists any more.

This is on the Riverside Walk…down to the Narrows.

The Narrows had too much water flow to hike down it. But I’d do that. Another day.

This fat squirrel perched in a tree…

Eat your greens.

On one of the flatter hikes we did…

An afternoon view of the rocks now…

At this point, it was much warmer, although still only in the high 70s. It felt warmer than that though.

This is the Lower Emerald Pool…

There were many closed trails and the main road through Zion was closed for repairs, so we’d have to come back to see the rest of it. The people made it hard, though…not on the first trail, but everywhere else. There should be a trail etiquette class required before you can come in a National Park, I think. Although Zion was the worst for that.

Anyway, more later…I have to leave in 5 minutes. We spent one full day and an hour or two of another day in Zion, and we could have spent a whole ‘nother day, no problem. Good to know.