Parks 1 - Zion Canyon National Park

I'm back!  Vacation was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!  I was going through my pictures and my friend's pictures and I realized I have so many pictures I want to share that I cannot possibly do it in one post.  I decided to do a post for each park instead.   That means I won't be talking about the new house for a while - which is probably all to the good.

The first park we always go to is Zion Canyon National Park, so I'll talk about Zion first.  Zion is in the southwest corner of Utah so it's usually hot and this year was no exception.  One of my absolute favorite hikes is in Zion though and it's become something of a tradition to go to Zion first and start out with the  Angel's Landing hike.  This year that hike almost kicked my ass, but I went into this vacation tired and stressed, so I shouldn't be surprised.  Luckily, I'm coming out of it rested and only minimally stressed, so that's an improvement.

Anyway, Angel's Landing is one of my favorite hikes because the last half mile is more of a climb or what I call a 'scramble' than it is a hike.  There are steep drops and chains set in the rocks to help you get up in places.  It's great fun although it takes some energy.  I nearly didn't have enough this year.  I think I'll try to be a little less tired going into this vacation in the future.  Anyway, the first picture is taken near the start of the point where you begin the scramble, looking up toward Angel's Landing itself, with me crossing one of the narrower points of the trail which has significant drops on both sides.  The second picture is looking back down on that narrow ridge from further up the trail.  It's just a great hike, but you definitely need to be okay with heights to do it.

Once you get to the top you're greeted by multiple small rodents.  This little guy is one of the chipmunks, but there are also rock squirrels up there.  All of them have become very used to people, especially in places like Angel's Landing, which is a popular place for people to go.  Actually, come to think of it, the parks were all very full of people this year.  Last year we went a little later and had more places to ourselves - including being first up on Angel's Landing - being the first to reach the top.  This year we were about the fourth or fifth group to get to the top, and it stayed busy with people up there.  

The view from the top is amazing in both directions.  This picture is looking down canyon and you can see we had some clouds.  We had rain in Zion one day this year, but even with that helping, it was miserably hot.   We pulled out all of our beat-the-heat tricks, including shopping for long periods of time, eating inside in restaurants, and driving up to Checkerboard Mesa, pulling out at all the pullouts to stop and take pictures.   The drive to Checkerboard Mesa and back can last around 2 hours if we take our time, and that's 2 hours in an air-conditioned car.   My friend and I have actually seen bighorn sheep on this drive on two occasions over the years and this year we got a real treat.  Not only did we see a small flock of sheep again, but my friend got a video of them, including two of the rams hitting head on - with a sound like a cannon shot!  It's an amazing piece of video.  This picture is of one of the rams and one female.  

Other wildlife we saw in Zion besides the  bighorns and chipmunks and the ubiquitous lizards included tiny toads along the trail where it runs by the river, which I've seen in Zion before but not on the Angel's Landing hike.  We also saw a white rock squirrel near our campsite, but it was camera shy.  The pictures I got were not good.   And of course we saw lots of little bats at sunset and sunup.   I'm not good enough to get those on camera either.   

So we arrived in Zion on Sunday, set up camp and did shopping, hiked Angel's Landing on Monday and did more shopping and touristy driving, and then broke camp on Tuesday and went to Bryce Canyon National Park.  From Zion we begin working our way back north and east across the state and Bryce comes next so Bryce will be the subject of my next post.  See ya.